Retailers lament disconnect from good sense

The head of retail giant JB Hi-Fi has called the new right to disconnect ‘crazy’ as employers backed the Coalition also winding back new casual conversion and intractable bargaining laws.

JB Hi-Fi boss Terry Smart has questioned the need for the new right to disconnect provisions giving workers the right to ignore unreasonable after-hour contact from their employers. Picture: Arsineh Houspian

The head of retail giant JB Hi-Fi has called the new right to disconnect “crazy” as employers backed the Coalition also winding back new casual conversion and intractable bargaining laws if Peter Dutton won the next election.

As the second part of the government’s Closing Loopholes changes became law on Monday, JB Hi-Fi boss Terry Smart questioned the need for the new right to disconnect provisions giving workers the right to ignore unreasonable after-hour contact from their employers.

“It does look crazy that we need legislation to control what should be a commonsense issue,” he said. “But we are a seven-day-a-week business, and I’m confident our teams manage that well as it stands … I don’t hold too many concerns, but yes, there is always potential for this to have an impact on our business.”

Airtasker chief executive and founder Tim Fung said the government should not be creating “rules and structure” around the right to disconnect.

“We’d be more saying, Hey everyone, you should talk to your boss about the right to disconnect or disconnection,” Mr Fung told the Australian Financial Review Workforce Summit 2024 in Sydney.

“Structures like nine to five days don’t make sense for everyone. And so we should have flexibility for different people to be able to work in different ways.

“So I think everyone should know where everyone else is in the business, when you can expect people to be in or out, or how they’re going to be contactable because you know, it’s a team sport. You need to know who all the players are on the field.”

Uber Eats Australia and New Zealand managing director Bec Nyst said it was important people were able to spend time with their family, focus on things they were passionate about and recharge, but “it is increasingly complex and challenging for businesses to work through this in a world where we are more enabled digitally, and there are areas of less clear divide between when you’re at work and when you’re at home”.

“Customers and stakeholders expect real-time responses from businesses” Ms Nyst said.”

Greens employment spokeswoman Barbara Pocock said she was “appalled” by employer claims that companies would cut back flexible work arrangements that allowed workers to leave early to pick up children or attend appointments during work hours if workers enforced a right to disconnect.

Senator Pocock also accused Peter Dutton of wanting to “end the weekend” by promising to repeal the right to disconnect laws if the Coalition wins the election. “He wants people at their barbecues to be taking those phone calls and rushing home to answer the email,” she said.

ACTU secretary Sally McManus accused employers of “scaremongering”.

The clash over the right to disconnect came as employers backed the Coalition winding back new casual conversion and intractable bargaining provisions.

The opposition on Monday unsuccessfully moved amendments to the Closing Loopholes Bill seeking to remove the casual and intractable bargaining provisions.

The amendments moved by the Coalition during the Senate and lower house debate on the bill are likely to be examined by the opposition when it prepares an industrial relations policy to be taken to the election.

Opposition employment spokeswoman Michaelia Cash on Monday said there were “many areas we will examine with the aim of making the industrial relations system more streamlined, efficient and with less red tape, especially for small businesses”.

Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Andrew McKellar said “business would welcome any move to reverse these regressive, productivity-wrecking laws. They are anti-worker, anti-business and serve only union bosses,” he said.

He said the intractable bargaining provisions were totally unworkable and the new casual provisions “will make hiring casual employees unattractive, impacting job creation and those workers who embrace the flexibility of casual jobs”.