Aussie workers get right to disconnect
SYDNEY—Australia gave millions of workers the legal right to “disconnect” on Monday, allowing them to ignore unreasonable out of hours contact from employers, to the distress of big industry.
People can now “refuse to monitor, read or respond to” their employers’ attempts to contact them outside work hours—unless that refusal is deemed “unreasonable.”
The new rule means employees, in most cases, cannot be punished for refusing to read or respond to contacts from their employers outside work hours.
The law is similar to legislation in roughly two dozen European and Latin American countries.
Unions welcomed the legislation, saying it gave workers a way to reclaim a level of work-life balance.
“Today is a historic day for working people,” said Michele O’Neil, president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions.
“The union movement has won the legal right for Australians to spend quality time with their loved ones without the stress of being forced to constantly answer unreasonable work calls and emails,” she said.
“Australian unions have reclaimed the right to knock off after work.”
Supporters say the law gives workers the confidence to stand up against the steady invasion of their personal lives by work emails, texts and calls, a trend that has accelerated since the COVID-19 pandemic scrambled the division between home and work.
“Before we had digital technology there was no encroachment, people would go home at the end of a shift and there would be no contact until they returned the following day,” said John Hopkins, an associate professor at Swinburne University of Technology.
“Now, globally it’s the norm to have emails, SMS, phone calls outside those hours, even when on holiday.”
Australians worked on average 281 hours of unpaid overtime in 2023, according to a survey last year by the Australia Institute, which estimated the monetary value of the labor at A$130 billion ($88 billion).
Rachel Abdelnour, who works in advertising, said the changes would help her disconnect in an industry where clients often have different working hours.
Switching off
“I think it’s actually really important that we have laws like this,” she told Reuters. “We spend so much of our time connected to our phones, connected to our emails all day, and I think that it’s really hard to switch off as it is.”
To cater for emergencies and jobs with irregular hours, the rule still allows employers to contact their workers, who can only refuse to respond where it is reasonable to do so.
But the reforms got a cool welcome from Australian industry.
“The ‘right to disconnect’ laws are rushed, poorly thought out and deeply confusing,” the Australian Industry Group said in a statement.
“At the very least, employers and employees will now be uncertain about whether they can take or make a call out of hours to offer an extra shift,” said the country’s peak industry group.
The law, enacted in February, came into force for medium-sized and large companies as of Monday.
Smaller companies with fewer than 15 employees will be covered from Aug. 26, 2025.
“We encourage workplace participants to educate themselves on the right to disconnect and take a common sense approach to applying it within their workplace,” said the head of Australia’s workplace relations regulator, Fair Work Ombudsman Anna Booth.
Under the law, workers may be ordered by a tribunal to stop unreasonably refusing out of hours contact, and employers likewise may be ordered to stop unreasonably requiring employees to respond, it said.
The question of what is reasonable will “depend on the circumstances,” the Fair Work Ombudsman said in a statement.
Deciding factors may include the reason for the contact, the nature of the employee’s role and their compensation for working extra hours or being available, it said.
