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Australian employees now have the right to ignore work emails, calls after hours

reuters.com

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Re: Australian employees now have the right to ignore work emails, calls after hours

#91

Post by zooq_ai »

moorow wrote: post #89
nomilk wrote: post #22

Another 'good in theory' idea. Trying to run a business in Australia is 'death by a thousand paper cuts'. Far too many rules. Letting individuals interact freely creates good outcomes 90+% of the time. Most of these rules are cost-benefit negative because the administrative burden of adherence exceeds the benefit of the new rule. Politicians and govt departments like them though; they get to put a dot-point on their…

I own a tech consulting company in Australia. What rules are you talking about? The only change that's come in recently that's affected us is the changes to fixed-term contracts, and that's an entirely fair change to stop employees from getting dicked over by bad employers. Likewise, moving super through one-touch payroll is a great change that literally only affects dodgy employers. The reason we're a country that d…

In Tech consulting, you can pass of all your regulations and cost to your client.

In fact consulting thrives exactly because of government overreach.

Startups are complete opposite of Consulting

Re: Australian employees now have the right to ignore work emails, calls after hours

#92

Post by sailfast »

How on earth would one even begin to enforce reverting the dismissal of an employee "because they didn't answer their phone after hours"?

"Employee was dismissed due to poor performance." "Employee was dismissed because they were not delivering enough value compared to their peers..."

These ideas and protections are great in theory, but very hard to manage in practice, and I'd imagine it gets tested on the first serious appeal.

Re: Australian employees now have the right to ignore work emails, calls after hours

#93

Post by yawaramin »

nomilk wrote: post #29
joshgermon wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you rely on exploiting the fact that your employee does not have the right to ignore your call outside of hours, your business shouldn't exist. What kind of take is this? It says it gives them the right to ignore, not to sue the business if they do call.

Employees benefit from calls out of hours. How? The employer is able to offer better service to customers, and make more money, and the employee can negotiate a higher salary from the more profitable business. Employees who are inflexible cannot offer the same level of service to their employer and its customers; they'll on-average be paid less and measures like this increase production costs, making goods and servic…

What you are describing is called wage theft.

Re: Australian employees now have the right to ignore work emails, calls after hours

#94

Post by yawaramin »

nomilk wrote: post #37
ceejayoz wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If overnight service is that critical and profitable, hire a night shift.

But who really pays? The employer? Yes, at first , but the cost is passed straight on to consumers. Prices are sky high in Australia for this reason, businesses have many laws that each increase prices by a fraction of a percent - almost imperceptible - but cumulatively very noticeable.

So your argument is that instead of consumers paying, employees should pay?

Re: Australian employees now have the right to ignore work emails, calls after hours

#95

Post by kergonath »

StressedDev wrote: post #51
sfpotter wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you live in a world of incredible privilege. Not everyone is so lucky.

Nope - A large portion of the world works like this. If you work for a place which demands you work all of the time, you either work for an abusive employer, or you get paid a lot of money to be at their beck and call. If the employer is abusive, find another job. If you are paid a large salary to be a slave to company, consider finding a job with a better work/life balance.

> Nope - A large portion of the world works like this. If you work for a place which demands you work all of the time, you either work for an abusive employer, or you get paid a lot of money to be at their beck and call.

If you mean that most employers are abusive then yes. That’s why there are laws like this one. Non-abusive employers can ignore it because they were already doing the right thing.

Re: Australian employees now have the right to ignore work emails, calls after hours

#96

Post by yawaramin »

rufus_foreman wrote: post #20
toomuchtodo wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This does not stop an employer from potentially disciplining or firing you. Laws do, because they bind. Implicit contracts and hope are not a strategy, with regards to worker rights and protections.

What stops my employer from potentially disciplining or firing me is first of all, that I am good at what I do, and second that I negotiate from a position of strength. If my employer wants me to work off hours, I mean maybe I will, if I don't have anything going on, and I'll take some time the next day where I won't work as compensation for doing that, I won't ask permission. If I do have something going on, I'll sa…

> What stops my employer from potentially disciplining or firing me is first of all, that I am good at what I do, and second that I negotiate from a position of strength.

In other words, you are at the tender mercies of your employer, and you rely on them to uphold the implicit contract that they will not cross those unspoken boundaries. I'm glad this strategy works for you, but you are literally placing your livelihood, a roof over your head, and the food on your table at risk to keep it this way. If that's an acceptable risk for you, then sure.

Re: Australian employees now have the right to ignore work emails, calls after hours

#97

Post by yawaramin »

StressedDev wrote: post #51
sfpotter wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you live in a world of incredible privilege. Not everyone is so lucky.

Nope - A large portion of the world works like this. If you work for a place which demands you work all of the time, you either work for an abusive employer, or you get paid a lot of money to be at their beck and call. If the employer is abusive, find another job. If you are paid a large salary to be a slave to company, consider finding a job with a better work/life balance.

> find another job

See the problem is that if labour laws didn't protect people, then everyone would be constantly under the stress of having one foot out the door and having to look for another job at the drop of a hat. Workplace productivity would plummet and the economy be quickly be tanked

Re: Australian employees now have the right to ignore work emails, calls after hours

#98

Post by yawaramin »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #54
dopylitty wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But completely eliminating planned on-call rotations is not part of the goal. It certainly should be. You want your app supported 24x7 then pay for three shifts. If the government won’t make it a law then IT workers can make it a demand when they unionize.

Sounds like a great deal for the lucky 1/3 of developers who get assigned the day shift, but isn't it pretty rough for the majority? I'd much rather keep a normal schedule and get woken up every once in a while than work 5pm-1am or 1am-9am.

Luckily, employees in other parts of the world are in different time zones and their business hours can easily cover our off hours.

Re: Australian employees now have the right to ignore work emails, calls after hours

#99

Post by morgante »

PlunderBunny wrote: post #24

Maybe we should think of these things as employment flags? There's no right-to-disconnect in my country, but sometime this year my boss started putting "I don’t expect a response to this email outside of your normal working hours." on the end of his email signature. I might not be earning FAANG money, but it's just another sign I'm working for a 'good' company.

[flagged]

Re: Australian employees now have the right to ignore work emails, calls after hours

#100

Post by lkois »

PlunderBunny wrote: post #24

Maybe we should think of these things as employment flags? There's no right-to-disconnect in my country, but sometime this year my boss started putting "I don’t expect a response to this email outside of your normal working hours." on the end of his email signature. I might not be earning FAANG money, but it's just another sign I'm working for a 'good' company.

I recently had a slack message on my Friday evening from my delayed-timezone manager starting his Friday. There was no expectation to answer out of hours, but it was some small detail I could answer in a few seconds. And this was from a new and intense 24/7 workaholic ex-FAANG manager, whose high expectations I was still getting used to, and who would likely spend his whole weekend working on this project. So I gave a quick response.

He said thanks, told me to turn my phone off, and sent a group message to the team reminding us not to work outside hours, with a link to instructions on disabling slack notifications. And then he started scheduling his own overnight/weekend DMs to send at 9am Monday.

It was an awesome response, and those firm self-imposed boundaries helped allow the work to be rewarding, rather than an absolute nightmare.

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