Australian workers now have the legal right to ignore their bosses after work hours, as a new “right to disconnect” law has come into effect Down Under.
Some experts say Canada should hurry up on a proposal to follow suit.
The new rule, which came into force Monday, means employees cannot be punished for refusing to read or respond to contact from their employers outside work hours.
Supporters say the law gives workers the confidence to stand up against the steady invasion of their personal life by work emails, texts and calls, a trend that’s accelerated since the pandemic scrambled the division between home and work.
Australians worked on average 281 hours of unpaid overtime in 2023, according to a survey last year by the Australia Institute, which estimated the monetary value of the labour at A$130 billion (US$88.30 billion or C$118 billion).
The change adds Australia to a group of roughly two dozen countries, mostly in Europe and Latin America, with similar laws.
France pioneered rules in 2017 and a year later fined Rentokil Initial 60,000 euros ($67,250) for requiring an employee to always have his phone on.
Opeyemi Akanbi at the School of Professional Communication at Toronto Metropolitan University said advancements in technology have outpaced labour protections in much of the world.
“Everyone is connected to their devices. It’s very easy for work to follow you in ways it may not have been able to follow you in previous times,” she said, adding that this has coincided with the rise of a work-centric identity.
Jared Lecker, a Toronto-based employment law expert, said Canada suffers a loss of productivity because of people feeling overwhelmed and being burnt out at work.
He said laws like the one in Australia can prevent such situations.
“You can’t punish your employees for refusing to respond after work or outside of work hours,” he said.
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Akanbi added that studies “suggest that when you allow people to disconnect from work, take much-needed vacation and things like that, they end up being more productive.”
Will Canada get a law like this?
In the 2024 federal budget, the Liberal government said it plans to introduce the “right to disconnect” to protect federally regulated workers from constant ringing and pinging off hours.
But with the House of Commons set to return in September, there’s no clear timeline for when that promise could come.
“One of the realities of life for all Canadians, but particularly for younger Canadians, is this experience of always being on, always available. It’s not healthy, it’s not a good way to live,” Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said at the time.
The changes will apply to 500,000 Canadians working in sectors such as banking, telecommunications and transportation, and are expected to cost $4.2 million over five years to implement.
It has also been a demand of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, the union representing federal public service workers, in recent years.
Canada’s proposed “right to disconnect” is one of a series of measures in the fiscal plan targeting millennial and gen-Z workers, “many of whom have worked their whole careers without firm separation between work and personal time,” the budget reads.
In 2022, Ontario brought in a similar policy. Lecker said the federal law is likely to look closer to the Ontario law than the one in France or Australia. And he says there’s a problem with that.
“If (the employer) were to violate that policy, it’s not clear what you could do as an employee to advocate for your rights,” he said.
Fife Ogunde, a policy consultant with the Saskatchewan government, said that “in Ontario, it’s more of a direction to employers with 25 or more employees to actually have a policy in place regarding disconnecting from work.”
“It’s not so much a right. It’s just saying employers need to have some sort of policy regarding that, and workers should be aware of it,” he added.
Lecker said the distinction between the Ontario policy and the one in Australia is clear punitive measures.
“The Australian law makes clear penalties. It encourages employers and employees to try and work it out themselves, which I think is a positive approach. But then if that fails, you can report to the Australian Fair Work Commission,” he said.
However, Akanbi said enforcing such laws could prove tricky under any circumstance. For one, some instances of “overwork” are likely to come not from superiors but rather from lateral colleagues.
“It’s your team member who’s working on projects,” she said.
Another challenge, she said, is that some employees might like working more.
“The final problem with enforcement is some people actually like to work. So when people have personalities that drive them to work excessively … the only place they can find meaning is at work,” she said.
However, she said despite these challenges, the law is a good starting point.
“What’s helpful about the law, as it stands, is it’s an attempt. It’s an effort to at least get these issues into conversations and force organizations to reckon with the negative consequences of overwork,” she said.
“Organizations have a responsibility to ensure that internally they’re creating cultures that don’t promote overwork.”
— with files from Global News’ Touria Izri and from Reuters
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