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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

#11

Post by roenxi »

awinter-py wrote: post #8
roenxi wrote: post #4

[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?

I'm just going off the summary document [0], but the law doesn't seem to require any particular working hours. It just says people should stick to them once they've been agreed. That's already implied by having working hours. The whole bill basically just tells the regulator that the legislature thinks the fine for not sticking to the employment contract should be up to $500 which is probably redundant since I assume the regulator (or someone, at any rate) can already fine people who don't stick to contracts. And they shouldn't need special and specific powers to fine someone for particular employment contract violations, if they're going to have power they should have general powers.

> taken to its logical extreme your argument would forbid all group negotiations, I'd think?

I don't see how the bill or anything I wrote have anything to do with group negotiations. People can negotiate as a group for all I care, as long as I can negotiate on my own.

[0] https://legislature.mi.gov/documents/2025-2026/billanalysis/...

Re: Michigan bill would bar employers from requiring after-hours coms with workers

#12

Post by childofhedgehog »

SoftTalker wrote: post #9
pwg wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

My IT department and I fully support staff requesting YubiKeys, there’s no concept of being a “troublemaker” for having boundaries and respecting security requirements. I’d talk to your IT management if your company culture seems different, I bet the actual techs do not have an issue with this.

Re: Michigan bill would bar employers from requiring after-hours coms with workers

#13

Post by nosioptar »

SoftTalker wrote: post #9
pwg wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I'm happy to be the "troublemaker". In my experience, one troublemaker can often recruit others to their cause.

Re: Michigan bill would bar employers from requiring after-hours coms with workers

#14

Post by ElProlactin »

While I don't disagree with the intent, the reality is that workers are already at a significant disadvantage and many don't feel they have the leverage to be more firm about boundaries (with most of them feeling this way being correct about their lack of leverage).

Laws like this will just encourage workarounds (like moving work to jurisdictions where such laws don't exist) and, eventually and wherever possible, elimination of positions (AI).

Re: Michigan bill would bar employers from requiring after-hours coms with workers

#15

Post by geetee »

headz wrote: post #10

It 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.)

I've worked at companies that don't outright require it, but they utilize a few workaholic employees to set an expectation sane people can't live up to. It creates a stressful environment where expectations are unclear. Combine that with the current job market and you effectively hold your employees hostage.

Re: Michigan bill would bar employers from requiring after-hours coms with workers

#16

Post by Havoc »

Maybe I just have abnormal leverage but I've never had after hours coms be an issue.

I've had two phone for basically all my working life and just don't look at it outside of work hours. Don't think I've ever been challenged on why are you not reading after hour messages. Everyone around me is professional enough to know that its a discussion that would go poorly.

Re: Michigan bill would bar employers from requiring after-hours coms with workers

#17

Post by gruez »

nosioptar wrote: post #13
SoftTalker wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I'm happy to be the "troublemaker". In my experience, one troublemaker can often recruit others to their cause.

>In my experience, one troublemaker can often recruit others to their cause.

Maybe if your company is filled with the type of people who run archlinux on their IBM era thinkpads, but otherwise I would be very surprised if could find even one or two sympathetic people who are also against installing a 2fa app. Even if you can get your manager to cave, it'll be less because they want to be "troublemakers" themselves, and more because they don't to deal with the hassle of arguing with you.

Re: Michigan bill would bar employers from requiring after-hours coms with workers

#18

Post by nickjj »

I'm curious, how often are people getting contacted outside of work hours for "regular" jobs?

I do SRE / Platform type of work where I'm technically on-call 24/7/365 but as a salaried worker I don't receive over time or anything like that. If an on-call event happens where I end up putting in 2 hours on a Saturday or Thursday night, I'd use my discretion to leave early or start late another day.

In the roles where on-call was an expectation, it was focused to critical downtime events, not to answer a Slack message from someone working in a different time zone or non-standard schedule. I don't even have work Slack or email on my personal phone. If PagerDuty goes off from a critical alert I get called, that's the only way I get contacted outside of normal hours.

Re: Michigan bill would bar employers from requiring after-hours coms with workers

#19

Post by tbrownaw »

How would this interact with existing rules around exempt / non-exempt (roughly, salaried vs hourly) employees?

I would think it would already be expensive to make someone paid by the hour do extra work stuff during time they're not already being paid for.

Re: Michigan bill would bar employers from requiring after-hours coms with workers

#20

Post by tough »

Havoc wrote: post #16

Maybe I just have abnormal leverage but I've never had after hours coms be an issue. I've had two phone for basically all my working life and just don't look at it outside of work hours. Don't think I've ever been challenged on why are you not reading after hour messages. Everyone around me is professional enough to know that its a discussion that would go poorly.

You probably have been just lucky with your bosses?

Slack also works on weekends and at the AM

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