Compliance Stuff

  Real World Impact:   U.S. employers should be aware of the global trend of “right to disconnect” laws and should review their policies on after-hours communications to stay ahead of social and legal changes. Last week, Australia's new "right to disconnect" law went into effect. T he law protects employees who choose not to monitor, read, or respond to communications outside of their working hours, with some restrictions. The protection d oes not apply to "unreasonable" refusals or emergency situations. Whether an employee's refusal to respond is considered unreasonable will depend on various factors, including the employee's seniority, personal circumstances such as caregiving responsibilities, the reason for the contact, and the extent of disruption caused to the employee. Australia is not the first to enact such a law. In recent years, more than a dozen countries have enacted some version of this right to disconnect.  As this legislation gains trac...

California’s right-to-disconnect bill, which SHRM opposed, has been shelved. The legislation has been “held under suspense” by the California State Assembly Committee on Appropriations, meaning that the bill has effectively been defeated for the remainder of the 2023-2024 California legislative session. California Assembly Bill 2751 would have required employers to establish workplace policies that provide employees with the right to disconnect from communications from the employer during nonworking hours, said Chris Micheli, a founding partner of Snodgrass & Micheli in Sacramento, Calif. The bill would have granted a right for employees to ignore communications outside of work hours except for in an emergency or for scheduling.  “There is little doubt that there are situations in which a limited number of employers abuse their ability to contact employees during nonworking time, but this legislation attempts to address the issue in a manner that would unnecessarily tie employe...

A California lawmaker is pushing for legislation to make it illegal for bosses to regularly contact you after hours, unless it's an emergency or to address work schedule issues. The Washington Post reported that more than half of workers respond to work messages outside of their normal hours.   If this law is passed, any employer that violates it, could face a fine of at least $100 per offense.   Source(s):  Law360 , received on April 3, 2024;  Washington Post , accessed on April 5, 2024.