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Kyle Sandilands' warning about new "right to disconnect" laws

Kyle Sandilands has warned Aussies against "abusing the system" put in place by new 'right to disconnect' laws. As of August 26th, employees of large companies can legally refuse to respond to "unreasonable" after-hours calls from their employer. Discussing the new laws on KIIS FM on Monday morning, Sandilands warned workers about celebrating the laws too soon, as they could come with a catch depending on the leniency of employers. "It doesn't mean they won't railroad you out behind the scenes," the radio host said. Kyle then argued that while it would be illegal under the new legislation for bosses to punish workers for not responding after hours, some devious managers could find ways around the laws. "Don't think for a second: 'Screw that real estate agent boss'," Kyle said. "Because eventually they will find a way to get rid of you to work around the boundaries." Sandilands then urged Aussies not to "abuse the system", saying, "Everyone you can say, 'oh by law, I don't have to respond to that' and they will then go, 'no worries'." "And then they get you for every little tiny infringement. You will go if they want you to go, one way or another. So, don't abuse the system." Jackie O then chimed in on the debate, saying the laws were a direct response to a modern working problem. "I feel like that might happen," Jackie said. "I think it's sometimes because the thing is that work hours now are infinity. When you didn't have email and mobile phones, you never got bothered outside of work hours." Kyle replied, "And nothing got done. It was the late 1970s. The world spun very slowly back then." Image credits: KIIS FM

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The right to disconnect is coming to Australia. What does this mean for you?

<div class="theconversation-article-body"><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/john-l-hopkins-255434">John L. Hopkins</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/swinburne-university-of-technology-767">Swinburne University of Technology</a> Next month, changes to the Australian Fair Work Act will give workers the <a href="https://www.fwc.gov.au/hearings-decisions/major-cases/variation-modern-awards-include-right-disconnect#:%7E:text=Changes%20to%20the%20Fair%20Work,2025%20for%20small%20business%20employers%20.">formal right</a> to disconnect from all work communication outside their usual work hours. The main driver for introducing “right to disconnect” laws has been to protect the health and wellbeing of workers in an increasingly hyper-connected world. But what exactly will the new laws mean for Australian businesses, managers and employees? <h2>Right to disconnect origins</h2> Right to disconnect laws were first introduced in <a href="https://www.simmons-simmons.com/en/publications/ck0bdjgs8esrg0b59w3wb1nkr/110117-le-droit-a-la-deconnexion-questce-que-cest">France</a> in 2017 in response to concern about the welfare of workers who were increasingly connected to their workplaces as a result of expanding digital technologies. France introduced a law requiring companies with more than 50 employees to negotiate agreements with staff on their rights to ignore their smartphones and other electronic devices after work hours. The <a href="https://www.ijmar.org/v5n3/18-008.html">reaction</a> was mixed. Some praised the move for promoting work–life balance and reducing stress, while others raised concerns about its potential impact on productivity and competitiveness. One critic at the time said "the French may quickly discover that their most productive workers are routine “lawbreakers” who stay connected during off-hours." To learn more about this topic, <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/su16124970">I reviewed 21 academic articles on the right to disconnect</a>, from 15 different countries over the past seven years, and identified several themes that may help Australian managers. <h2>The ‘always on’ culture</h2> The growth of digital devices – including smartphones, laptops, tablets and smart watches – means many Australian workers have been working way beyond their contracted number of hours for many years. A 2023 Australia Institute <a href="https://australiainstitute.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Short-Changed-GHOTD-2023.pdf">study</a> estimated Australian workers on average were doing an extra 5.4 hours of unpaid work per week. The unofficial encroachment of work duties into workers’ personal time – also called “availability creep” or “time theft” – equates to an extra 281 hours’ unpaid work per year. This is estimated to be costing workers an average of AU$11,055 annually. It has led to serious concerns for employee health and welfare, work-life balance and workplace exploitation. The post-pandemic rise of flexible work arrangements in Australia, while offering many <a href="https://researchbank.swinburne.edu.au/file/be3dfbba-fc85-4834-97aa-7a7399a94b17/1/2020-hopkins-key_working_from.pdf">lifestyle and health benefits</a>, may also contribute to our “always on” culture and expectations to be constantly available and contactable. <figure class="align-right zoomable"><figcaption>T</figcaption></figure> This <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/julianhayesii/2024/03/25/the-rising-dark-side-of-remote-work-that-ceos-need-to-pay-attention-to/">digital presenteeism</a> has been found to affect the health of workers in different ways, including causing headaches, eyestrain, insomnia, back pain, anxiety and burnout. <h2>Protecting workers</h2> Another key theme of right to disconnect laws is how working time, work availability and rest times are observed. <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/business-59263300">Portugal has even taken things a step further</a> than other countries, placing the responsibility for the right to disconnect on the employer, by implementing “refrain from contact” laws. This means companies with more than ten employees can be fined if they text or email staff outside their contracted hours. However, the new Australian law won’t restrict managers from contacting employees whenever they wish, but it will give their employees a <a href="https://www.fairwork.gov.au/about-us/workplace-laws/legislation-changes/closing-loopholes/right-to-disconnect#:%7E:text=Eligible%20employees%20will%20have%20a,employer%20or%20a%20third%20party.">legal right</a> to refuse to "monitor, read or respond to communications from an employer or third party made outside their working hours, unless refusal is unreasonable." If an employee chooses not to respond, disciplinary action cannot be taken, nor can the employee be treated differently, such as through rostering or performance requirements, for deciding to disconnect. This should encourage conversations about what represents reasonable contact. The Fair Work Commission says this must be based on the reason for contact, the employee’s personal circumstances, the nature of the employee’s role and responsibilities, and whether the employee is being compensated for being available outside ordinary work hours. <h2>Making the change</h2> In some countries, right to disconnect policies have been formally set in law, while others rely on self-regulation by employers instead. France, for example, legislated out-of-hours’ electronic communication between employers and employees through statutes and legislation, meaning government entities are required to enforce the right and a court is needed to interpret it. Germany, on the other hand, does not formally legislate disconnection provisions but many of its companies (including car manufacturers <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Martin-Bressler/publication/335058028_On_the_Grid_247365_and_the_Right_to_Disconnect/links/5d4c815c92851cd046ad2a4d/On-the-Grid-24-7-365-and-the-Right-to-Disconnect.pdf">Volkswagen and Daimler</a>) already have their own regulations in place. In Australia, the right to disconnect will be a right under <a href="https://www.fairwork.gov.au/employment-conditions/protections-at-work">general protection laws</a>. Disputes about an employee’s response will need to be discussed and resolved at the workplace level but, if a resolution isn’t possible, employees or employers can <a href="https://www.fairwork.gov.au/about-us/workplace-laws/legislation-changes/closing-loopholes/right-to-disconnect">take the case to the Fair Work Commission</a>. The commission can then make orders or deal with the dispute in other ways. <h2>What to expect</h2> The new laws come into effect 26 August. They are an important step towards encouraging sensible conversations about the importance of rest, availability, and whether it is necessary to contact workers outside their normal hours. Right to disconnect laws should challenge managers to create a work culture where employees feel comfortable disconnecting from work and understand the importance of maintaining a clear boundary between work and rest, where their rest periods are formally respected and preserved. As an initiative for supporting improved digital wellbeing and work-life balance, in today’s hyperconnected world, clearer boundaries between working time and rest are crucial.<img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/231690/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /> <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/john-l-hopkins-255434">John L. Hopkins</a>, Associate professor, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/swinburne-university-of-technology-767">Swinburne University of TechnologIy</a> Image credits: Shutterstock This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-right-to-disconnect-is-coming-to-australia-what-does-this-mean-for-you-231690">original article</a>. </div>

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Australia warned US could “disconnect” from nation over Victoria’s Belt and Road deal

The US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said that his country could “simply disconnect” from Australia if Victoria’s trade deal with Beijing threatened its telecommunication security. On Sunday morning, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the state government should never have signed up to China’s trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The scheme is a global infrastructure push aimed to recreate the Silk Road for the 21st century, involving new ports, highways and railways across the globe. In an interview with Sky News on the same day, Pompeo said the agreement could impact his nation’s Five Eyes intelligence-sharing partnership with Australia. “I don’t know the nature of those projects precisely,” Pompeo said. “To the extent they have an adverse impact on our ability to protect telecommunications from our private citizens or security networks for our defence and intelligence communities we will simply disconnect, we will simply separate. “I suppose Victoria has some rights that it can undertake but every citizen of Australia should know that every one of those Belt and Road projects needs to be looked at incredibly closely.” Several hours later US ambassador to Australia Arthur Culvahouse issued a damage control statement saying he wanted to “set the record straight”. Culvahouse said Pompeo was asked to address a “very remote hypothetical” and was unfamiliar with the details of the BRI agreement. “The United States has absolute confidence in the Australian Government's ability to protect the security of its telecommunications networks and those of its Five Eyes partners,” Culvahouse said. “We are not aware that Victoria has engaged in any concrete projects under BRI, let alone projects impinging on telecommunications networks, which we understand are a federal matter.” The Victorian Government spokesperson said the BRI was about creating opportunities for businesses and local jobs “that will be more important than ever as we rebuild from the coronavirus pandemic”. “Telecommunications regulation is the responsibility of the Commonwealth government,” she said. “Victoria has not, and will not in the future, agree to telecommunications projects under the BRI.”

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How our phones disconnect us when we’re together

Smartphones have changed the world. A quick glance around any street or communal space shows how dominant <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/271851/smartphone-owners-in-the-united-kingdom-uk-by-age/">our favourite</a> digital devices have become. We are familiar with the sight of groups of teenagers not talking, but eagerly composing messages and posts on their screens. Or seeing couples dining silently in restaurants, ignoring the romantic flickering candle in favour of the comforting blue light of their phones. <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45042096">Attempts</a> have been made to come up with rules of phone etiquette during face-to-face interactions. But why do these devices that are meant to connect us when we’re far apart seem to cause so much division when we’re close together? Some research has begun to examine this question. In one 2016 <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Shalini_Misra/publication/270730343_The_iPhone_Effect_The_Quality_of_In-Person_Social_Interactions_in_the_Presence_of_Mobile_Devices/links/55d5c20608aeb38e8a804bce/The-iPhone-Effect-The-Quality-of-In-Person-Social-Interactions-in-the-Presence-of-Mobile-Devices.pdf">study</a> conducted in US coffee shops, researchers found that using a mobile device while spending time with someone reduced the ability of one conversation partner to properly listen and engage with the other. This effect was particularly strong when the people interacting didn’t know each other well. In another more <a href="https://www.guidea.be/Portals/0/dtxArt/blok-document/bestand/Dwyer-et-al.-2018.-Smartphone-users-undermine-interactions_1dcf1a50-21c2-4e35-87c7-04bff4c34056.pdf">recent study</a>, researchers told restaurant goers to either leave their phones out on the table or to put them in a box, out of reach and sight. At the end of the meal, participants were asked how enjoyable the meal was and how distracted they had felt. People who had their phones on the table felt more distracted, which in turn led to lower enjoyment of their time spent eating with friends or family. My own research has also delved into the topic of phones distracting from high quality face-to-face interactions. In <a href="https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/sites.ucsc.edu/dist/5/491/files/2014/09/College-Students-Mobile-Phone-Use-During-Face-to-Face-Interaction.pdf">my study</a>, I invited pairs of friends to come to the lab to take part in an experiment and then asked them to wait for five minutes sitting side by side in a waiting area while I printed out questionnaires. This was actually a deception. I was only really interested in what they would do during the five minutes of “waiting time”, so I secretly filmed them to see what they did. I then asked them to complete a questionnaire on how well they thought that period of interaction had gone. Finally, I disclosed to the participants that they had been recorded and asked for permission to keep the tapes to analyse in our study. Everyone allowed us to keep their videos (even the pair who had criticised my outfit when I left them alone). Then with the help of my research assistants, we watched all the videos to see how much each pair of friends had used their phones. We found that 48 out of the 63 friendship pairs used their mobile phones, and on average they used their phones for one minute and 15 seconds out of the five-minute period. We calculated these averages based on both friends’ behaviours because interactions are dependent on both people who are present. So even if only one person used their phone, we would still expect their phone use to influence the quality of the interaction. The longer they spent using their phones, the lower the quality of their interaction. We also found that regardless of how close the friends were, they all had worse interactions when they used their phones. Watching the videos of friends using their phones taught me a lot about why they can be such a problem in face-to-face interactions. On occasion, the phones were used to share information, like showing a picture or email that they wanted to discuss. These types of usage didn’t seem to hurt their interactions, but they also didn’t happen very often. Only 21% of people used their phones in this way and on average the sharing only lasted five seconds. What happened more often was what I refer to as “<a href="https://cedar.wwu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1366&context=wwuet">distraction multitasking</a>”, when friends were listening with one ear but still looking at and thinking about what was on their phones. Distraction device This type of use made up the majority of what we observed on the tapes. One particularly sad clip I will always remember was between two female friends. Both friends were getting along well after I left them alone, and then one of them got out her phone. In the meantime, her friend had thought of something she would like to say and looked up eagerly about to share perhaps some gossip or good news. But as soon as she saw that her friend was completely absorbed in her phone, she looked away, disappointed and hurt. They didn’t speak again during the waiting period. This seems to me to be the biggest problem that phones create in face-to-face interactions. They make us less available to others by distracting us from important social cues, like that light in a friend’s eyes when she has something important to tell us. While technologically mediated conversations can be useful to maintain our relationships, most of us still prefer face-to-face interactions to <a href="https://cyberpsychology.eu/article/view/4285">bond with our friends</a>. Face-to-face conversations can feel safer for sharing intimate information – like things we’re worried about or proud of – because they can’t be saved and shared with others. Being physically present also allows for physical contact, like holding someone’s hand when they’re scared or giving them a hug when they’re sad. When someone is focused on their phone, they may miss out on opportunities to give this kind of support. The best phone etiquette to remember is that phones are meant to <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-mobile-phone-for-christmas-doesnt-mean-less-family-time-for-teenagers-128081">help us connect</a> with our friends and family when they’re far away. When they’re right in front of us, we should take full advantage of the opportunity to connect in real life – and leave our phones alone.<img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important; text-shadow: none !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/130838/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /> <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/genavee-brown-908554">Genavee Brown</a>, Lecturer in Psychology, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/northumbria-university-newcastle-821">Northumbria University, Newcastle</a> This article is republished from <a href="http://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-our-phones-disconnect-us-when-were-together-130838">original article</a>.

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