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Polity & Governance
Mahesh

15/02/24 04:54 AM IST

Australia’s ‘right to disconnect’ Bill

In News
  • The Australian government is hoping to pass a Bill that will institute a “right to disconnect”, regulating whether bosses can contact workers beyond their working hours through calls, messages or e-mails.
Major provisions
  • The Bill is part of other changes introduced to industrial relations laws, through the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Closing Loopholes No. 2) Bill, 2023.
  • It says, “An employee may refuse to monitor, read or respond to contact, or attempted contact, from an employer outside of the employee’s working hours unless the refusal is unreasonable.”
  • The Bill says that factors such as the extent to which the employee is compensated for overtime work, the reason for the contact or attempted contact, and the level of disruption it causes to the employee will all be taken into account to judge whether the contact was reasonable.
  • In case an employee-employer dispute over such contact happens, they must first attempt to resolve it at the workplace through discussions between the parties. If that attempt fails, they may move to the Fair Work Commission, the country’s industrial relations tribunal. Refusing to follow an FWC order could mean potential fines for the employer.
  • France was the first country to have introduced a ‘right to disconnect’ for employees, in 2017. “Employees are more and more connected during hours outside of the office.
  • It proposed that every registered company and society shall constitute Employees’ Welfare Committees consisting of its employees to assist employees in the negotiation of terms and conditions of out-of-work hours with employers.
  • The draft Bill also mentions a penalty “at the rate of one per cent of total employees’ remuneration” to be paid by companies for noncompliance with its provisions.
  • If an employee works beyond work hours, they will be entitled to overtime at the normal wage rate.

Source- Indian Express

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