Workplace law expert backs right to disconnect

The right of workers to ignore their bosses after hours has been backed by an IR expert.

ACTU president Michele O'Neil before the Senate inquiry into the Closing Loopholes Bil. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

The right of workers to ignore phone calls and emails from their bosses after hours has been backed by top workplace law ­expert Andrew Stewart.

Appearing before the Senate inquiry into the Closing Loop­holes Bill, Professor Stewart was asked his view on the proposal by Greens senator Barbara Pocock, who supports the policy.

Greens leader Adam Bandt has previously reserved the party’s position on the industrial relations bill but declared its priority was ensuring that “right to disconnect” provisions were included in the final legislation.

The ALP national conference in August backed the right of workers to ignore phone calls and emails from their bosses after hours. Delegates supported a Senate committee in March and “will work to implement the recommendations, including an ­enforceable right to disconnect”.

Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke has said he was “really attracted to the idea” but the government had not made a final ­decision.

Professor Stewart said the right to disconnect proposal was “something we should be considering”.

“I think many of us, particularly in professional roles but you see it in a lot of other jobs as well, understand that the boundaries between work and personal life have become very very leaky, and the experience during Covid with so many people undertaking work from home has simply ­intensified that,” he said.

“So when you look at all of the changes in the way in which work is being organised, where it’s being performed, the capacity for constant communication through ­devices that many of us become addicted to using, I think there is a really really good case.

“There’s a lot of evidence about the health effects of not being able to get a true break from work, an awful lot of studies that I think show that there is a reason to intervene here.”

Professor Stewart said it was important that any right to disconnect should operate at two levels: as a general principle and then worked through the award system on an industry-by-industry basis to work out where it was appropriate and where exemptions might be necessary.

Exemptions might be necessary in industries where workers are paid for being on call, such as emergency workers.

Appearing before the inquiry, ACTU president Michele O’Neil accused employers of “trashing the democratic process” by running a Donald Trump -style campaign of misinformation to try to defeat Labor’s industrial relations changes.

Ms O’Neil said employer ­organisations had spent millions of dollars “telling misinformation and lies” about the potential ­impact of the changes.

She said business has claimed the changes would cost jobs, raise the cost of living, reduce productivity, destroy labour hire, end casual employment and “allow unions to storm into small businesses, farms and homes wielding more powers than the police”.

“None of this is true,” she said.

“I’ll offer just one response to the many absurd claims about the economic impact of this bill. Last financial year business posted a record $1.1 trillion in profits.

“The government’s estimated cost of the bill is that it would cost these businesses just 0.08% of those profits. Yes, 0.08% at a time where their profits are $1.1 trillion.”

Ms O’Neil said the cost of the reforms would mean so little ­financially to business “but it could mean a huge amount for a dis­ability-support worker engaged on a platform, or a flight attendant being paid half the rate of her colleague”.

“These employer tactics of misinformation are straight out of the Trump playbook: fill the airwaves with nonsense,” she said.