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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

#291

Post by InDubioProRubio »

gwbas1c wrote: post #283

> But the Australian Industry Group, an employer group, says ambiguity about how the rule applies will create confusion for bosses and workers. Jobs will become less flexible and in doing so slow the economy, it added. Whenever I encounter someone professionally who can't deal with a little ambiguity about when it's appropriate to interrupt someone; I feel like I'm working with a child trapped in an adult's body. "Ch…

Some loners, cant be alone at home with themselves. After hours, they put the alpha dog away, in a little box, were nobody can be forced to play with that creature. So they call those they can torment.

If somebody calls after hours, for unimportant stuff, s/he needs to be marked up for therapy and re-socialisation.

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

#292

Post by dathos »

gwbas1c wrote: post #283

> But the Australian Industry Group, an employer group, says ambiguity about how the rule applies will create confusion for bosses and workers. Jobs will become less flexible and in doing so slow the economy, it added. Whenever I encounter someone professionally who can't deal with a little ambiguity about when it's appropriate to interrupt someone; I feel like I'm working with a child trapped in an adult's body. "Ch…

I mean interrupting is one of the harder social actions in my opinion, especially in the workplace. So much of this comes from culture, family and your personality.

I say this as someone who interrupts, and loves to be interrupted. Am I a kid in an adult body, or are my norms different than yours?

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

#293

Post by sharpshadow »

~300 hours unpaid overtime per year and having to respond after work to emails and calls? That’s crazy.

And they worry now that the economy will slow down. I think people will start to work normally now, in the previous conditions I would work much slower as a compensation.

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

#294

Post by ausbah »

nomilk wrote: post #46
joshgermon wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, we know increased profits always go to the worker. Particularly when the business needs to rely on exploiting them to make those increased profits. Let me try your logic here... Employees benefit from no paid annual leave! How you ask? 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. Am I doing this r…

Start with a theoretical employee who offers no value and gets paid zero. Dial up their usefulness and consider what happens. The greater the value an employee offers, the stronger their negotiation power in pay discussions. It's not more complicated than that.

this comment is a good example of why modern economics is seen as out of touch. you start with a theoretical model then try and apply it to the world vs starting with the lived expenses of workers and building off of that

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

#295

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

neom wrote: post #264
ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

McDonald's, a non-failing firm, not owned by PE, was once described by a former CFO thusly: "We are not technically in the food business. We are in the real estate business." They realised that owning the land upon which their restaurants, allowed them to succeed. Red Lobster's PE firm, on the other hand, did the exact opposite : sold the most valuable asset out from under their restaraunts, to another PE firm, which…

They're in Chapter 11, they're not out of business yet. Why do you think that is what happened? It doesn't seem to be in line with what GGC told their LPs, so I'm curious where you get your interpretation of the events from? Do you have any links or reading you could provide me with?

>Why do you think that is what happened?

The reason I think that is what happened is because that is what happened. Here are some links, as requested:

How a bad real estate deal sunk Red Lobster [0]

When a private-equity firm bought the iconic seafood chain in 2014, it sold the real estate under the restaurants for $1.5 billion. Then the restaurants struggled to pay the rents [1]

It Was A Bad Real Estate Deal, Not A Bad Meal Deal That Killed Red Lobster [2]

Ultimate Endless Real Estate Costs at Red Lobster [3]

Golden Gate crippled Red Lobster by selling off one of its most valuable assets, the real estate it owned [4]

To help fund the deal, Red Lobster spun off its real estate assets in a transaction known as a sale leaseback agreement. Red Lobster had long owned its own real estate but would now be paying rent to lease its restaurants. Sale leasebacks are very common in the restaurant industry, but the arrangement wound up hurting Red Lobster because it became stuck with leases it no longer could afford to pay. [5]

But again, it wasn’t because of the shrimp. Following the sale of Red Lobster to Golden Gate, the chain’s real estate assets were also sold off, which meant that the restaurants now had to pay rent on these locations to their parent company. As such, the company was stuck in leases for underperforming restaurants that it couldn’t afford [6]

0: https://www.restaurantdive.com/news/bad-real-estate-deal-sun...

1: https://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/private-equity-rol...

2: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bad-real-estate-deal-not-1730...

3: https://artofprocurement.com/supply/ultimate-endless-real-es...

4: https://prospect.org/economy/2024-05-22-raiding-red-lobster/

5: https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/03/food/red-lobster-seafood-rest...

6: https://www.eater.com/24160929/red-lobster-bankruptcy-endles...

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

#296

Post by fred_is_fred »

CalRobert wrote: post #281

Are people here treating emails like IM's? An email is inherently asynchronous. Why would I expect a response to an email before working hours? When did people start confusing them with synchronous communication?

Sometimes I get a random thought on a Saturday and send an email so I don’t forget. I have people on my team who view that as a “drop everything, cancel the wedding, pull the car over” level emergency. The issue is they ALL do this to themselves. They put work email on their phones, they have notifications enabled. Nobody asked them to do this, nobody asked them to read email all weekend. Even if I tell them “please ignore all weekend email”, it’s like they physically cannot do it. It’s almost an addiction.

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

#297

Post by nikolayasdf123 »

CalRobert wrote: post #281

Are people here treating emails like IM's? An email is inherently asynchronous. Why would I expect a response to an email before working hours? When did people start confusing them with synchronous communication?

like oncall or incident alerts for example.

(^say management unilaterally decided you have work offwork hours and it is "urgent" or else look for a new job)

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

#298

Post by nicbou »

Aachen wrote: post #196
nicbou wrote: post #165

This is already the case in Germany. It also applies to vacation and sick days. Above all, it's deeply ingrained in German culture, so that no one expects to reach you outside of your working hours. I help people settle in Germany, and it's one of the main cultural aspects I cover. The other is how normal it is to take sick days.

Netherlands also The only people that I see working 24/7 are those who run their own business, which made sense to me because everyone else has a contract that stipulates the obligations of both sides. Unless that doc says that you're expected to work outside of work hours (which sounds self-contradictory), that's not part of the agreement. I'm surprised Australia needed a law for that

The culture extends to self-employed people to an extent, but it can be hard to set boundaries for yourself when you are building your own thing.

I've been in business for 7 years and fully self-employed for 4 years. Last week was my very first vacation without my laptop.

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

#299

Post by mulmen »

iforgotpassword wrote: post #284
xivzgrev wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being a jerk extends all around. As a manager I’ve had two employees tell HR that I was racist. The evidence? One I fired for performance, the other I had on a performance improvement plan. Mind you I had other minorities on my team in parallel that had no performance issues and strangely enough did not say I was a racist. Also one time the HR guy (who also doubled as office manager) ran a large scheme where he claim…

No idea why you're being down voted. I've had the very same experience once. Employee just sucked, after some nudges that went either ignored or just unnoticed I gave a very clear speech on where they're standing. Three months later I got him fired. He went to HR and claimed I was racist, and threatened with a lawyer. This really stressed me out for a good while, this was dragging along for weeks, with ugly mails and…

The details really matter here.

I won’t assume you or GP were racially motivated but “just sucks” can easily be code for “wrong race/culture”.

“Some nudges” is a red flag to me, regardless of race. You think you communicated a message but aren’t sure if it was understood. That’s your responsibility as the messenger, not theirs as the unknowing recipient.

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

#300

Post by consteval »

nine_zeros wrote: post #278
consteval wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. The fundamental idea of a company causes this behavior. They, the company, actually doesn't have a choice. You have to turn a profit and the only way to achieve that is exploitation. You have to take labor and pay less than it's worth and pocket the difference. There's no way around it. You might say "well you can be less exploitative" - but not really. Because you ALSO have to thrive in your market. Even…

> Because consumers will choose the cheaper option almost every time. Largely true - but the key word is "almost". > You have to turn a profit and the only way to achieve that is exploitation. You have to take labor and pay less than it's worth and pocket the difference. There's no way around it. But this is NOT the only way to achieve lower prices. Lower prices can be achieved by simple things like keeping your empl…

As I've said, you can be less exploitative. You can't be not exploitative.

> happy employees

Trader joes employees are not actually paid very well. They're paid okay. Also trader joes is not very successful. They're a small niche, only profitable in the whitest and richest parts of the country.

> seems rather naive and stupid from a branding and long term return perspective

Yes, to an extent. But branding, as I've alluded to, is mostly advertising. The reality of your product is a tiny tiny part of your brand. How your brand is advertised is a much bigger part.

Luxury goods are often not actually higher quality. They just advertise to rich people and have big "no poors allowed" signs on the front door. They create an artificial scarcity in people's minds, and monkey brain says "ooo ooo rare = valuable!!"

Trader joes is cleaner, sure, and the experience is nicer. But from a food quality perspective, how much better is it than Walmart or Target? ... not much. I can find produce and whole-foods at both locations and I can live an equally healthy life with a diet consisting of only foods from Walmart.

But Walmart doesn't have the prices written on cute little chalk boards, so...

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