Australia gives millions of workers 'right to disconnect'
Australia gave millions of workers the legal right to "disconnect" on Monday, allowing them to ignore unreasonable out-of-hours calls, emails and texts from their bosses. But the reform got a cool welcome from top industry, the Australian Industry Group, who said the new laws are "deeply confusing".
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00You need to turn off at some point after you come from work.
00:27It's a big day when you get, you know, get transport, go to work, come home, do all your
00:32things.
00:33You don't be having to think that, oh, my boss is going to ring me to do something.
00:37You can just relax.
00:42At least when you are disconnected with work, you are kind of disconnected with a lot of
00:47stress, anxiety and all those deadlines and all those kind of things.
00:50So at least it gives some space as well to think, to reflect.
00:59We fear this is going to be really difficult, both for employers and employees, because
01:04we're going into completely uncharted waters here.
01:08We don't yet know what will be judged to be reasonable in terms of both employer and employee
01:14rights.
01:15This is a sledgehammer to crack a nut, because this is not a big issue in Australian workplaces.
01:21And suddenly employers have this penalty hanging over them that's come really out of the blue.