Government tweaks industrial relations laws to ensure employers don't face criminal penalties over the right to disconnect
The government says it will try to tweak its own industrial relations laws to ensure employers don't face criminal penalties over the right to disconnect. Yesterday, the senate passed legislation which gives workers the right not to respond to work requests outside of work hours. The laws inadvertently legislated criminal penalties for employers that don't follow the rules.
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TVTranscript
00:00 Under the new laws, workers legally don't have to respond to emails, calls or text messages
00:07 from their boss or anyone else in the office after hours, unless it's something like changing
00:12 your shift or a work emergency.
00:14 You can't be punished for not responding to work requests after your shift.
00:19 Now the government says this was a way to address the underpayment concerns around overtime
00:24 and also concerns that workers are being quietly forced to stay switched on after hours.
00:31 The 11th hour, it is not our job to fix their mess, it is their job to go away, do the job
00:38 properly, bring decent legislation into the Senate and manage a proper process.
00:45 Not this chaos and fumbling at the last minute and then a desperate reach out to the Liberals
00:51 to fix it.
00:53 We did hear from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese after this, he did blame the opposition for
00:57 that not getting through.
00:59 He said they were negative and destructive.
01:02 This is the Liberals' penalties that they insisted on yesterday for reasons beyond my
01:08 comprehension.
01:10 There was a government amendment in the Senate to make it very clear that that would not
01:18 be a possibility and the Liberals in a petulant action threw the toys out of the cot and refused
01:27 to grant leave for the government's amendments.
01:31 Now the Prime Minister says those penalties won't be applied because the legislation doesn't
01:35 go through for another six months.
01:38 Now they have also said that they will seek to change those issues in a separate legislation.
01:44 [BLANK_AUDIO]