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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

#101

Post by morgante »

ceejayoz wrote: post #32
nomilk wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

This is preposterous and basically kills startups completely.

You genuinely think a seed stage startup should hire a complete "night shift" to ensure no engineers ever get paged "after hours?" This simply kills startups completely.

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

#102

Post by intended »

givemeethekeys wrote: post #87
dabiged wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to respectfully disagree here. You place far too much stead in "individuals freely interacting" and none in "micromanaging bosses constantly hassling you at ridiculous hours for pissant assignments that can wait until the morning". My experience in working at Australian businesses, especially as an IC, is that there is far too much of the latter, and far to little of the former. This is especially true the you…

While I support his new law, more rules do act as a barrier to entry / competition for new / smaller businesses. Larger companies can more easily adhere to increasingly complex employment rules than smaller ones. The new law protects people from being bothered by micromanagers during off hours, but reduced market competition keeps people stuck with a shitty boss, and reduces their chances to get a raise.

Yep. Rules and enforcement create compliance costs.

So do contracts.

We aren’t removing contracts though.

If we are discussing market forces, an abundance of roles doesn’t equal an abundance of good managers.

It does increases search costs for workers.

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

#103

Post by [deleted] »

dopylitty wrote: post #14
selcuka wrote: post #11

> 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. This clause pretty much invalidates the rest of the rule. Why should an employee need to justify their inability (or unwillingness) to respond? I can understand the "jobs with irregular hours", but otherwise shouldn't it be a best effort th…

This only makes sense if emergencies are strictly defined. For instance "don't come to the office there's a bear inside" is an emergency. "the crud app you support fell over" is not an emergency. If the latter is an emergency to the company they should staff for 24/7 support, not rely on exploiting people during their off hours to provide free support.

[deleted]

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

#105

Post by morgante »

dopylitty wrote: post #47
Aurornis wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "the crud app you support fell over" is not an emergency. I think a lot of people are going to be disappointed to learn that situations impacting business-critical operations would be considered emergencies. The assumption that Australia just outlawed the concept of having an on-call rotation is not supported by the article. The article says requiring an employee to be on-call 24/7 for general purposes would indeed…

> 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.

Tripling the cost of running a tech company in Australia is effectively outlawing startups.

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

#106

Post by lkois »

yawaramin wrote: post #93
nomilk wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But, but, if the employer doesn't steal wages from employees, where will they get the money to pay them higher salaries?

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

#107

Post by scorpioxy »

ludston wrote: post #60

My personal experience is that Australia doesn't have a huge problem with this generally. But mileage may vary. If it were a huge problem then vested interests would lobby fiercely against the law, and it seemed to pass without much challenge or comment from the public here. This law might seem like a big deal if you're working in a place without labour protection laws, and therefore you're used to constant abuse fro…

This hasn't been my experience in Australia. I don't believe this law will make a difference at all either. The reason is that if you refuse to do it, then this will come up during performance reviews as something else. "More responsive" or "available for your teammates" or "more of a team player" etc. Of course the manager won't be asking you in any direct way or in written form to be available outside working hours. The incentive system will just be changed to make it your choice to do so.

Conducting interviews over the last year or so had people telling me of their stories. The labor protection laws didn't seem effective except for clear cut cases and even then you'd probably just get a bit of money and you would've ruined your reputation of getting hired ever again because you're a trouble maker.

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

#108

Post by intended »

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…

Employees != customers.

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

#109

Post by intended »

morgante wrote: post #101
ceejayoz wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This is preposterous and basically kills startups completely. You genuinely think a seed stage startup should hire a complete "night shift" to ensure no engineers ever get paged "after hours?" This simply kills startups completely.

I’m sorry, this insults quite a few startups and firms that don’t believe in wage theft.

Getting equity is not wage theft.

If the principle behind your equity pay out scheme is wage theft with extra steps, you’ve got a huge problem, and an unsustainable business.

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

#110

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #48

I'm an Australian and I'm really surprised this law is needed. I would be very surprised to hear somebody was fired for ignoring email after hours.

I’m in Australia too. I’ve never been at a company that dysfunctional either.

But there’s always some manager that’s not reasonable. This is just a formality that puts what most reasonable people already do into writing.

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