Australia Grants Workers Legal Right to Disconnect from Work After Hours

On Monday, Australia granted millions of workers the legal right to “disconnect,” allowing them to ignore excessive after-hours calls, emails, and messages from their employers.

People can now refuse to monitor, read, or respond to their employers’ attempts to contact them outside of work hours, unless the denial is deemed “unreasonable”.

Unions applauded the measure, saying it allowed workers to restore some work-life balance.

“Today is a historic day for working people,” declared Michele O’Neil, president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions.

“Australian unions have reclaimed the right to knock off after work,” she informed me.

People on the streets of Sydney appeared to welcome the shift.

“I have a very hard time disconnecting, and even when I’m not logged in, my brain is constantly working overtime,” non-profit worker Karolina Joseski told AFP.

“So getting that after-hour call from my boss doesn’t necessarily help.”

However, Australia‘s leading industrial body did not warmly embrace the move.

“The ‘right to disconnect’ laws are rushed, poorly thought out, and deeply confusing,” the Australian Industry Group stated.

“At the very least, employers and employees will now be uncertain about whether they can take or make a call out of hours to offer an extra shift,” according to the report.

The law is identical to that of several European and Latin American countries.

According to University of Sydney assistant professor Chris Wright, research shows that employees benefit from having the right to unplug.

According to a November 2023 study conducted by the EU work-related agency Eurofound, more than 70% of employees in European Union enterprises with a right to disconnect policy saw its impact as good.

Employees are experiencing “availability creep” as cellphones and other digital gadgets make them more accessible to their bosses, Wright told AFP.

“Having a measure that restores to some extent the boundary between people’s work and non-work lives is a positive thing, certainly for employees but also for employers,” he added, especially in businesses that are looking for new staff.

The Australian law, adopted in February, went into effect for medium-sized and big businesses on Monday.

Smaller enterprises with fewer than 15 employees will be covered beginning August 26, 2025.

Fair Work Ombudsman Anna Booth, Australia’s workplace relations regulator, advised people to implement the new law with “common sense.”

According to the legislation, workers may be directed by a tribunal to stop unreasonably declining out-of-hours communication, and employers may be ordered to stop unjustly requiring employees to reply, the regulator stated.

The Fair Work Ombudsman stated that the question of what is reasonable will “depend on the circumstances”.

The reason for the interaction, the nature of the employee’s employment, and their compensation for working longer hours or being available are all possible considerations, according to the report.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese applauded the reform, which was pushed through by his centre-left Labour government.

“We want to ensure that, just as people are not paid 24 hours a day, they are not required to work 24 hours a day,” he told national broadcaster ABC.

“It’s a mental health issue, frankly, as well, for people to be able to disconnect from their work and connect with their family and their life.”