Why giving workers the right to disconnect should be a key pillar of IR reforms

As Australia dissects the details of the Secure Jobs, Better Pay Bill, it is worth noting that another workplace policy reform being debated in Canberra may have a similar fundamental impact on the industrial relations landscape.

Attracting little media attention in comparison with the proposed jobs and pay laws, the Senate Select Committee on Work and Care handed down an interim report earlier this month into the rights of workers to disconnect from their workplace. Its recommendations should be seen as a national watershed moment in the recognition of the impact of technology on how we work — particularly in the light of changes unleashed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The committee’s recommendations, if adopted, will have a profound influence on workplace regulations, productivity and our standard of living — rendering them perhaps more important in the longer term than the debate about industry-wide bargaining about the hit the floor of Parliament.

Why?

Chiefly because the Work and Care committee report recommends that the Fair Work Act, as well as other legislation, should be changed to enable workers to “enact a right to disconnect” from work.

It goes on to say that reforms should include “the right to enable and support productive work from home and flexibility of work; protect the right of workers to disconnect from their job outside of contracted hours and to enforce this right with their employer; place a positive duty on employers to reasonably accommodate the right wherever possible; and allow employees to appeal to the Fair Work Commission where the right is not being enacted by employers”,

These are not trivial reforms. 

If adopted at the federal level, these amendments would be some of the most important changes to the workplace landscape in decades, and many would argue, go some way to reducing worker stress, improve productivity, and help to remove the curse of wages theft in some industries.

Moreover, to comply with these changes, there would need to also be a fundamental review in many organisations of how they account for workplace engagement — from pay rates, to overtime, scheduling and even illness. In other words, the changes proposed will require significant improvements to systems governing workplace relations. That can only be a good thing because thousands of organisations continue to lack systems to comply with today’s rules, let alone the kinds of recommendations the Senate Committee has made.

The Committee on Work and Care’s recommendations are well overdue and come well after similar reforms in major European economies, including France, which has had laws in place for five years around this area. We need to take the lead of countries such as Germany and France, which are considering at the national legislative level to put into laws that employers will not be forced to be available for emails after work hours.

The role of technology in workplace relations

As crucial as they are, the recommendations from the committee should be seen as only the start of the reform needed in Australia’s workplace regulations with regard to the impact of technology. 

We should also be pressing for an acceleration in other areas — including the reform discussed in a report from the federal Attorney-General’s department from April last year. This report looks into the future workplace awards compliance, an area I am deeply familiar with. 

The document, entitled, “A strategic report for the Attorney-General’s Department covering the future of awards compliance and regulatory technology” includes commentary around “drafting policy initiatives to support the uptake of regulatory technology” to “ensure the benefits of regulatory technology for businesses are realised”. 

Taken together with the Care and Work Committee’s proposals, the AG’s department’s report is a powerful pathway to reducing wage theft and restoring trust for the millions of Australians who rely on technology to get their jobs done and be appropriately paid. Unfortunately, it recommends these highly promising reforms be considered a medium-term (two to five years) initiative. I would argue they should be fast-forwarded if we are to take a truly comprehensive approach to regulatory workplace reform. 

Until we take a holistic approach to workplace reform, productivity, life/work balance, and wage growth, we will risk only achieving less than optimum outcomes and another decade of wage theft and worker-employer mistrust. The platform for reform is being laid by the Work and Care report, and possibly by the new legislation tabled in Parliament last week, but the opportunity is there for more fundamental change.

The question is, will we take it?

Grant Custance is the CEO of Melbourne-based software company nimbus.