New law protects employees Australians can ignore calls from their boss after work
In the digital age, constant availability is a burden for many employees. In Australia, you no longer have to be reachable after work. Does Switzerland also need such a law?
No time? blue News summarizes for you
- Relax at last: In Australia, employees now have the right not to be reachable outside of working hours.
- Employees in medium-sized and large companies can now switch off their cell phones after work and no longer have to respond to emails. The law will only come into force later for small companies with fewer than 15 employees.
- In Switzerland, too, constant availability puts a strain on employees and contributes to exhaustion.
Many Australians are now allowed to switch off at the end of the working day in the truest sense of the word. A new law gives millions of employees the right to be unavailable to their superiors in their free time - and to refuse to respond to attempts to contact them. The so-called "Fair Work Legislation Amendment" was passed by parliament in February.
Employees in medium-sized and large companies can now switch off their cell phones after work and no longer have to respond to emails. For employees in companies with fewer than 15 employees, the new rules will not come into force for another year. But there are exceptions - for example, if ignoring contact attempts is inappropriate, especially in the event of a work-related emergency, as reported by 9News.
More time for the family
"We want to make sure that people who aren't paid 24 hours a day don't have to work 24 hours a day," said Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in an interview with Australian broadcaster ABC. "It's also a mental health issue, because it's about people being able to get away from their work and get back to their family and their lives."
Studies had previously shown that the work-life balance in Australia was worse than in many other countries, the media wrote. There are already similar laws in around 25 countries, said John Hopkins from the Faculty of Business, Law and Entrepreneurship at Swinburne University.
Model for Switzerland?
According to a survey by Travailsuisse, constant availability is also a burden for many people in Switzerland. Around 60 percent would also work in their free time, and around half of those surveyed stated that they "often" or "very often" work overtime.
The union criticizes the fact that more and more employees are suffering from exhaustion as a result. Occupational and organizational psychologist Nicola Jacobshagen explains the importance of recovery phases outside of working hours on SRF: "If you have to be available 24/7, it's difficult to recover from your job".
Ultimately, this is also a question of corporate culture. If managers set an example of being available at all times, "you do the same yourself".
With material from dpa.
