The U.K. is considering joining a host of other European countries in making it more costly for restless employers to contact their employees after the working day ends.
The country’s fresh-faced Labour government is drafting legislation that would outlaw late-night WhatsApps, emails, and Slacks and potentially fine dissenting bosses heftily.
While commonplace across Europe, legislation giving workers a “right to disconnect” has lagged behind in the U.K., but now might become more European if reported changes to work culture are implemented.
Considering just how close they are to the Finance Industry where this stuff is 100% standard, I doubt it will go ahead or there will be exceptions done for the Finance Industry just like New Labour did in the past for other pieces of legislation.
Nah it’ll go through and then we’ll never even hear about it, the UK doesn’t even strictly enforce minnimum wage or overtime.
Make it mandatory to get extra pay for this extra contact and it would be greatly reduced. I agree that we live in a 24/7 society however that shouldn’t be an excuse to make people work off schedule. If you need someone at night then pay that person.
Oh, I absolutelly agreed that there should be a way for it to be possible to do it as long as it was paid for and trully optional for the worker.
My point is that, from my experience working in the UK most of which in that Industry, the guys currently in Government there and who have announced this measure, are and have long been totally in the pocket of the Finance Industry and will do the bidding of that Industry, so I suspect that even the fair version of this which you suggest will not be done because it means more costs to the kind of people New Labour really represents (which isn’t actually “labour”).