Michigan bill would bar employers from requiring after-hours coms with workers
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Re: Michigan bill would bar employers from requiring after-hours coms with workers
#2Direct link to the bill: https://legislature.mi.gov/Bills/Bill?ObjectName=2026-SB-094...
Re: Michigan bill would bar employers from requiring after-hours coms with workers
#3Android used to have an "office hours" setting which would prevent specific email accounts from notifying you outside of your specified times.
I had my work GMail set to notify only between 0800 (so I could check for a "don't come in" message) and 1700 Mon-Fri. Of course, it didn't account for holidays / sick leave etc, but it was good at prevent me from panic checking every ping.
I wish that was a feature on modern Gmail. Or, indeed, WhatsApp and Signal. You can manually mute, but there's no way to silence specific notifications at specific times.
Regardless, employees shouldn't be expecting employees to be on-call without compensation. But users also need ways to manage this themselves.
Re: Michigan bill would bar employers from requiring after-hours coms with workers
#4[flagged]
Re: Michigan bill would bar employers from requiring after-hours coms with workers
#5Android used to have an "office hours" setting which would prevent specific email accounts from notifying you outside of your specified times. I had my work GMail set to notify only between 0800 (so I could check for a "don't come in" message) and 1700 Mon-Fri. Of course, it didn't account for holidays / sick leave etc, but it was good at prevent me from panic checking every ping. I wish that was a feature on modern…
Second phone?
Re: Michigan bill would bar employers from requiring after-hours coms with workers
#6Android used to have an "office hours" setting which would prevent specific email accounts from notifying you outside of your specified times. I had my work GMail set to notify only between 0800 (so I could check for a "don't come in" message) and 1700 Mon-Fri. Of course, it didn't account for holidays / sick leave etc, but it was good at prevent me from panic checking every ping. I wish that was a feature on modern…
Check out Buzzkill, its a great app for managing notification rules. You can set it to hide and batch up notifications during your off hours and show them later.
Re: Michigan bill would bar employers from requiring after-hours coms with workers
#7Android used to have an "office hours" setting which would prevent specific email accounts from notifying you outside of your specified times. I had my work GMail set to notify only between 0800 (so I could check for a "don't come in" message) and 1700 Mon-Fri. Of course, it didn't account for holidays / sick leave etc, but it was good at prevent me from panic checking every ping. I wish that was a feature on modern…
Second phone?
Indeed. If $job is not willing to buy and hand me a "work phone" then they are out of luck, nothing for $job gets put onto my private phone. If they think they need this ability, then they also need to add a line item to their budgets for the cost of the phone and the service. And when faced with this alternative, they have not, so far, decided they want to pay for a phone.
Re: Michigan bill would bar employers from requiring after-hours coms with workers
#8[flagged]
a major function of the law is to mediate between groups that have unequal power
as a collective, employees out-vote employers and can obtain this kind of concession through the law but not in an individual contract negotiation
(mancur olson notwithstanding)
taken to its logical extreme your argument would forbid all group negotiations, I'd think?
Re: Michigan bill would bar employers from requiring after-hours coms with workers
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
Second phone?
Indeed. If $job is not willing to buy and hand me a "work phone" then they are out of luck, nothing for $job gets put onto my private phone. If they think they need this ability, then they also need to add a line item to their budgets for the cost of the phone and the service. And when faced with this alternative, they have not, so far, decided they want to pay for a phone.
Where do you draw the line? If the employer wants you to install a 2FA app on your phone, do you demand a separate phone or alternate 2FA device for that and mark yourself as a troublemaker? Or do you just do what 99.8% of the staff does and install the app?
Re: Michigan bill would bar employers from requiring after-hours coms with workers
#10It kind of baffles me that this needs to be a bill. I guess I'm lucky that I've never worked for a company that required me to be constantly online. (I work remotely for a US company, work European working hours, and nobody requires me to be online outside of them.)