Ridiculous ‘right’ to disconnect laws don’t fit modern jobs | David Penberthy

Here in the pampered West, people are having an attack of the vapours if they get an email after 5pm but want maximum flexibility too, writes David Penberthy.

In the minds of some, it now seems that having a job is such an ordeal that every aspect of the working day must be measured against its impact on our happiness and wellbeing.

All forms of stress are apparently deleterious, every deadline creates unbearable pressure, and being told what to do by your supervisor can be construed as belittling or bullying conduct.

Perhaps the end game is a world where people are simply paid not for doing a job but having a job. A job where the potentially hazardous concept of expectations has been expunged from the contract.

The best example of this mindset is the absurdity around the so-called “right” to disconnect.

I didn’t know such a right existed.

In Haiti and Liberia people are still hoping to exercise their right to clean water and shelter. Here in the pampered West, people are having an attack of the vapours if they get an email after 5pm.

Best get onto the United Nations to see if we can have the freedom not to get emails given equal billing alongside the right not to die from dysentery.

TELL US WHY IN THE COMMENTS

I get that there are some jobs where out-of-hours contact is a problem.

The one I would nominate first up is teaching.

For all the lazy sledging of the teaching profession over their holidays – a significant portion of which still involve work anyway – the reality is that most teachers spend much of their “spare” time working on tasks they cannot complete during the school day.

For jobs such as these, thought should be given to how these specific workplace demands can be better managed.

But the idea pushed by the Greens and accidentally enshrined in law by Labor that bosses could even be jailed for out-of-hours contact is patently ridiculous.

It is based around an old lefty presumption that all bosses are basically bastards and their poor staff subjected to endless abuse.

Greens leader Adam Bandt speaks to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese during Question Time. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Martin Ollman

In 2024, when the job market is a buyer’s market for employees, few bosses would be stupid enough to hassle their staff inordinately out of hours lest they irritate them into an exit, with the guarantee of comparable work being easily found elsewhere.

And as for the employee who would actually lodge a Fair Work complaint over out-of-hours contact… I reckon we all know the type, the sort of malingerer who takes three days stress leave on account of a so-called tension headache because the new fluorescent lighting is a bit too bright.

The real problem with the right to disconnect laws is this. It confirms the mindset that some workers now want the maximum amount of flexibility with the least amount of expectation or scrutiny.

In the backdraft of the pandemic, working from home is now becoming the norm for white-collar jobs. Nowhere is this more true than in the federal public service.

The Australian revealed this week that in the very government department which oversees how Australians work, more than 70 per cent of staff now work from home either most of the time or all of the time. For 36 per cent of Department of Employment and Workplace Relations staff, these arrangements have even been enshrined in formal work-from-home agreements for 1355 employees.

The work from home take-up has been even higher in the Health Department, topping the list with 80 per cent of staff swapping the business suit for the tracksuit.

The departments of Industry, Veterans Affairs and Climate Change all have just over 70 per cent of their staff using WFH arrangements.

Herein lies the problem for bosses and managers in liaising with staff in 2024. If workers are going to demand the continuation of flexible work arrangements, which were only ever necessitated by a pandemic, they can’t have all the flexibility without any of the inconvenience.

Everyone who works from home will admit that they don’t approach it in a 9-to-5 fashion, and that they do non-work stuff during the day. I have been doing it myself for years. My part-time newspaper work is done from home and I do it whenever it suits me. I do all the school pick-ups, so I never do anything mid-arvo.

If it’s not too hot I’ll spend a bit of time gardening most days. I do all the food shopping Monday to Friday during “working hours” because I would rather spend the weekend having fun with my family.

If you are going to reconfigure and slice up the old 9-to-5 day to suit your own ends, by starting earlier or finishing later, or even just working harder in shorter bursts, why should your employer be required to pretend that there is an eight-hour window within which staff contact is allowed?

Santos CEO Kevin Gallagher said he wasn’t convinced a 9-day week would work but the results speak for themselves. Picture: Marie Nirme

Why add to that the ridiculous threat of jail time for any boss daring to stray outside a now-extinct boundary?

The most sensible example of modern workplace flexibility has been provided locally by the state’s biggest business, Santos.

The energy giant announced this week that despite the initial scepticism of its chief executive Kevin Gallagher, it had moved formally to a nine-day week for most of its employees.

None of those lucky staff have to take a pay cut to have a long weekend every second Friday. Rather, they must make up that day’s work on the other nine days. After a trial last year the company found that productivity actually increased, with staff saying they are happier and work more efficiently than before.

That’s the way to do it – not with some 19th century us-versus-them approach epitomised by the Greens laws about human rights which don’t even exist, and shouldn’t exist, lest we become a nation of clockwatching petals who rush off to HR at the first harrowing sign of an after-hours email.