Could right to disconnect laws change our relationship to work?
Of the raft of workplace improvements that came into law on 26 August 2024, the right to disconnect is attracting the most attention.
Simply put, the right to disconnect means that “anyone who works for an organisation with more than 15 employees now has the legal right to ignore all work communications outside working hours when it’s deemed to be reasonable”.
Not surprisingly, employers and their champions on the right derided the right to disconnect as a “global fad” which would hasten the decline of productivity (Nick Carter in The Australian).
Ai Group chief executive Innes Willox told ABC breakfast radio Brisbane that the laws were “deeply confusing”.
"We're concerned it's just going to lead to more conflict and disharmony within workplaces."
On the other hand, in the Sydney Morning Herald, author Tim Duggan hoped the new law “might just be the start of a revolution that forces us to rethink the role and importance we place on work, often to the detriment of everything outside it”.
“Overwork? Going up. Burnout? Rising. Apprehension? Increasing. Disengagement? Up, up and up.
“Why are we not all demanding that something dramatic must change to alter the current trajectory of our relationship to work?
“Maybe, just possibly, the new right-to-disconnect law is the moment we’ve been waiting for.”
The union view
ACTU president Michele O'Neil was more straightforward, saying, “Australian unions have reclaimed the right to knock off after work".
"The average person does five to six hours of unpaid work every week.
"Thanks to the introduction of this new law, Australians can now be paid for those hours of work."
IEU Federal Secretary Brad Hayes said the new provisions were “another clear example of the difference union membership makes for thousands of education workers across the country”.
“The current teacher recruitment and retention crisis is directly linked to unsustainable workloads and career burnout. A legislated right to disconnect from work is another valuable tool for IEU members seeking to push back ever creeping work intrusions into their precious home and family time.
“Like all workers, school staff need a break from work and deserve much needed down time.
“Employer directions, parental queries and student contact often encroach on personal time well outside the school day.”
“A right to disconnect can help turn the tide for teachers, drowning under unrelenting workloads.
Brad said right to disconnect laws were part of the IEU’s “multi-pronged fightback against workloads” with new collective agreements bringing greater balance to work duties, and workload impact tests and the streamlining of onerous compliance tasks helping teachers and school leaders shed unnecessary tasks.
The union’s Federal Executive has authorised the federal office to apply to vary the Teachers Award to ensure that both school employers and staff have clarity over when the right to disconnect applies.
This is necessary because teachers take work home, have paid school holidays, lack set starting and finishing times during term time and have their hours of work averaged over the school year.
Revolution or tweak?
Optimist Duggan sensibly points out that “happy workers are better workers” and the point of the law is not so workers can be “lazy, shirk responsibility or give two fingers to their bosses…”
“If you want a content and healthy employee in the workplace, you need to give them space and time to be content and healthy outside it.”
He hopes the right-to-disconnect is the start of “an overdue conversation we need to have around genuine life-work balance”.
“I hope it means that every workplace will learn how to treat employees with the respect they deserve, especially around the number of hours they’re contracted. I genuinely hope that it will foster long-term changes to how we as a nation currently think about overtime and overwork.”
On that point, Brad agrees with the optimist: “The changes have kickstarted discussions between school employers and members on how to lead a major cultural shift in work expectations within our school communities.”
The nitty gritty of the right to disconnect
An employee’s refusal to monitor, read or respond to contact or attempted contact (disconnection) will be unreasonable if the contact or attempted contact is required by law.
If the contact or attempted contact is not required by law, certain matters must be considered when deciding whether the employee’s disconnection is unreasonable. These include:
the reason for the contact (or attempted contact)
how the contact (or attempted contact) is made and how much disruption it causes the employee
any compensation (monetary or non-monetary) the employee receives
to be available to work when the contact is made, or to work outside their ordinary hours
the employee’s role and their level of responsibility
the employee’s personal circumstances, including family or caring responsibilities.
The IEU will be observing these criteria to ensure all future logs of claims we are involved with include a right to disconnect claim. In bargaining that is already underway, we will table a new right to disconnect claim.