Employees In Australia Now Have The Right To Ignore Email And Calls Regarding Offices After Working Hours Starting Today

Illustration. (Unsplash/Jason Goodman)

JAKARTA - Workers in Australia can ignore emails after returning from work to text messages on weekends starting Monday.

The move was made possible in line with the new law "the right to cut ties" designed to limit email and office phones that enter private life.

With the enactment of the regulation today, employees in the Kangaroo Country in many cases cannot be punished for refusing to read or respond to contacts from their superiors outside of working hours.

Proponents of the law said the rule gave workers confidence to fight persistent disruptions to their personal lives via email, text and office calls, a trend that has risen since the COVID-19 pandemic, disrupting the boundaries between homes and offices.

"Before we have digital technology, there is no interference, people will go home at the end of the shift and there will be no contact until they return the next day," said John Hopkins, a professor of madya at Swinburne University of Technology.

"Now, globally, receiving emails, SMS, phone calls outside of these hours have become commonplace, even while on vacation," he continued.

According to a survey by the Australia Institute last year, Australians worked an average of 281 hours of overtime without being paid in 2023, which estimates the monetary value of the workforce is 130 billion Australian dollars.

To deal with emergencies and work with irregular working hours, the rules still allow employers to contact their workers, who can only refuse to respond if it is natural to do so.

Determining whether the rejection is natural will be carried out by Australian industry referees, the Fair Work Commission (FWC), who must consider the role of employees, personal circumstances, and how and why the contact was made.

The commission has the authority to issue an order to terminate and, otherwise, impose a fine of up to $19,000 for employees or up to $94,000 for the company.

The change adds Australia to a group of about two dozen countries, mostly in Europe and Latin America, which have similar laws.

Pioneer France introduced the rule in 2017. A year later, the Rentokil Initial pest control company was fined 60,000 euros for requiring its employees to always activate their phones.

Rachel Abdelnour, who works in advertising, said the change would help her escape from the industry where clients often have different working hours.

"I think it's actually very important for us to have a law like this," he told Reuters. "We spend so much time with cell phones, emails all day long, and I think it's very difficult to turn it off," he said.

However, the Australian Industry Group, a group of businessmen, said the ambiguity of implementing the rule would create confusion for superiors and workers. Work will be less flexible and thus slow down the economy," he added.

"The law literally and metaphorically appears just like that, introduced without much consultation on its practical impacts and leaving little time for entrepreneurs to prepare themselves," the group said.

Separately, Australian Trade Union Council President Michele O'Neil said the warnings listed in the law meant the law would not interfere with reasonable requests. Instead, the law will stop workers from paying the price for poor planning by management, he said.

He quoted an unnamed worker who completed his shift at midnight, but later received a text message four hours later and was asked to return to work at 6 a.m.

"It's very easy to make contact, common sense no longer applies," he said.

"We thought this would stop the bosses for a moment and think if they really needed to send that text message or email," he added.