See how the right to disconnect shapes modern work, from France and India to Australia, Canada, and beyond. Review key laws, country examples, and digital-age policies protecting boundaries between office demands, rest time, and family life.
By Brad Nakase, Attorney
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The right to disconnect is a suggested human right that relates to people’s capacity to unplug from work and, in particular, to refrain from using job-related electronic communications, like emails and messages, outside of work hours. New information and communication technologies have fundamentally altered the modern workplace.
There is a massive adoption of electronic devices in the workplace. The line between job & personal life has become increasingly blurred. Digital tools give workers flexibility and freedom. They can also lead to a lack of boundaries and excessive meddling in their personal life. The right to disconnect is protected by legislation in a number of nations, mostly in Europe but also in Australia, and it is occasionally included in the policies of many big businesses.
1. Origins
In France, the right to disconnect was established by the French Supreme Court’s Labor Chamber. According to the ruling from 2nd October 2001, “the worker is under no duty either to consent to working at his residence or to bring home his files & working gear.” The Supreme Court upheld this ruling in 2004, holding that “the reality that [the worker] wasn’t reachable on his mobile device outside business hours cannot be viewed as misbehavior.”
2. El Khomri Act
To improve workplace conditions for French citizens, the French government established the El Khomri legislation. Article 55 of Chapter II, “Adopting the Employment Law to the Modern Age,” contained a clause amending the French Labor Code to incorporate the right to disconnect.
The processes for employees to fully exercise the right to disconnect, as well as the business’s implementation of systems to regulate the utilization of digital tools with the goal of providing respect for private and family life, rest intervals, and leave. If an agreement cannot be reached, the employer will draft a charter after consulting with the work council or, if that is not possible, the staff delegates.
The processes for exercising the right to disconnect are outlined in this charter, which also calls for the adoption of training & awareness-raising initiatives on the responsible use of digital tools for staff members, leadership, and management professionals.
3. Context
In reaction to a September 2015 research on the effects of technological developments on labor that endorsed the right to “professional disengagement,” the French government incorporated the concept into its Labor Code. Myriam El Khomri (French Minister of Labor) received the study after an earlier minister requested information regarding the impact of the digital revolution on labor.
A healthy work-life balance is necessary for digital transformation to improve employees’ quality of life, and businesses should encourage employees to learn how to disengage. According to the paper, one psycho-social hazard of being continuously linked is cognitive & emotional overload, which can result in a feeling of exhaustion.
Given that electronic devices have made it more difficult to distinguish between work and personal life, the government saw the need to enact such a regulation so as to adjust to the evolving nature of working life. It is believed that the adoption of the freedom to disconnect was essential for French workers’ health.
This law was introduced in response to a 2016 study that found 37% of employees were using business digital tools (such as work mobile phones) after hours and that sixty-two percent of workers desired stronger regulations and controls to prevent this.
4. Application
Every organization has a different approach to the right to disconnect. The El Khomri Law provides the right but fails to explain it, so businesses are free to decide how best to apply it, taking into account the nature of the business (e.g., whether or not it operates with nations in foreign time frames or whether staff members work nights or weekends). The entitlement to be included in the Mandatory Annual Negotiation on gender equality & the nature of workplace quality of life is applicable to enterprises with over fifty staff members.
The El Khomri Regulation already mandates this addition by taking into account the methods and strategies for regulating the application of digital instruments. If this isn’t the case, a “charter for acceptable conduct” that specifies when workers can unplug from digital devices and when they shouldn’t be using laptops or cellphones should be established with union representatives. Employers with fewer than fifty workers are required to provide their staff with a document that outlines company policies.
The El Khomri Law’s rights do not apply to independent contractors who participate in online crowdwork programs.
The law offers no direction on how to control the application of digital tools or how to educate employees. Furthermore, even if the new law requires big businesses to engage in negotiations, they are not required to come to a consensus. As a result, the right can’t be carried out and upheld if no understanding is achieved between the business and its employees. It is expected that employers would thereafter be required to create a charter, as is the case with small businesses. Again, businesses that don’t do this are not penalized.
Furthermore, unless it includes provisions that enable it to be regarded as an annex to the organization’s internal rules, such a manifesto has no legal significance in France.
Employers who neglect to incorporate the right to disconnect in their MAN risk criminal prosecution for impeding the fulfillment of union rights, which carries a €3,750 fine and a year in jail.
5. As a model for other nations
It’s conceivable that additional EU countries will take France’s lead and pass legislation along these lines. In the absence of a defined right, workers and unions might bargain for comparable clauses that incorporate the right to disconnect in their own work. This could lead to the right being standard by industry standards, HR management best practices, or contractual agreements.
The idea of the Right to Disconnect has grown in popularity in India. Workers have the right to refuse to answer communications related to work when it is outside of scheduled working hours (emails, calls, & texts). A. A. Rahim (Kerala) has brought attention to this important matter in the Rajya Sabha. He noted that laws are required to safeguard employees’ mental well-being & work-life balance.
Awareness efforts highlighting the right to disconnect as a fundamental labor right have been started by the Democratic Youth Federation of India (a youth organization). Anna Sebastian Perayil, a twenty-year-old professional accountant, passed away in July 2024. It was one unfortunate case that sparked public discussion. Her family claims that her premature death was caused by high stress from her job and after-hours access.
Although there aren’t any regulations concerning the right to disconnect, businesses in Germany have a history of putting such rules into place.
In 2011, VW put in place a policy prohibiting email service providers from delivering emails to employees’ mobile phones between 6 p.m. and 7 a.m. Similar regulations limiting employees’ access to digital devices after work hours are in place at several German corporations, including Allianz, Telekom, Henkel, and Bayer.
As part of a larger agreement on working from home, Germany’s employment minister forbade supervisors from contacting employees after hours in 2013. It was carried out to safeguard employees’ mental health.
The automaker Daimler released a program in 2014 dubbed “Mail on Vacation”. Staff members could purge their incoming emails when they were on holiday. Workers are able to take a vacation peacefully.
Andrea Nahles was the labor minister. She tried her best to enact a law on anti-stress (2014). It was in reaction to the country’s growing stress & mental health problems. Such legislation would prohibit businesses from communicating with workers after hours. Nahles asked the Federal Institute for Health and Safety at Work to write a report on workplace mental health & the feasibility of passing legislation to address it. In 2017, the report was finished and released.
Senate Act No. 2233-B says “Measures to guarantee non-entrepreneurial independent contractors and measures to promote flexible expression in times and locations of subordinate work” brought the right to disconnect into Italian law. The Act’s Article 19(1) regulates the execution of an Agreement for Aggregate Work and contains a disconnect right.
For administrative or probative regularity, the Agreement regarding Aggregate Work must be specified in writing. It will regulate the work done outside the offices of the business, including how the employer exercises executive power and the equipment that employees use. Along with the technical & organizational steps required to guarantee that the worker is separated from the electronic devices, the agreement also specifies the worker’s time to rest.
The Labor Code was amended on 19th February 2021. It granted remote workers the freedom to disconnect. It outlines three types of work: working remotely, functioning from home infrequently or in extraordinary situations, and homeworking.
Employees who fall under the recently defined categories are entitled to refrain from utilizing work equipment throughout their allocated rest periods, which include vacations, public holidays, and impediments at work, according to Section 52(10) of the modified Slovak Labor Code. The employer is not allowed to view an employee’s use of their right to disconnect as a violation of the professional obligations (mentioned in the clause).
The revised Employment Relationships Law was implemented on 16th November 2024. It mandates that employers grant employees the ability to be inaccessible. Workers may exercise their freedom to unwind or during legitimate absences from work (e.g., holidays, annual leave, weekends, & sick leave). It is more important to detach from electronic devices during this period than just having the ability to be far away from work. A union contract at the activity level determines the actions that the employer must take.
This should be decided by a labor contract at a more limited level if no such document is established or if the issue is not addressed by such an agreement. The company may not be obligated by a collective bargaining agreement. The issue must be governed by an internal order of the company. It should be approved in accordance with the standard protocol for such actions. The company must ensure that all employees are mindful of the act. It must be conveyed to them in a way that is typical for the employer (e.g., via an announcement board at the company’s premises, utilizing technology, etc.).
All parties must agree on the precise time the employee must be accessible to the employer. It is also advisable to include this provision in the employment contract itself. The employee has the right to be non-accessible after these hours.
House Bill 4721 was titled “An act allowing workers the right to disengage from job-related electronic communication after work hours.” First, it seeks to define “hours performed” under Article 48 as time spent using work-related electronic equipment after hours. Secondly, it would add Articles 48-A & 48-B, which read as follows:
Right to disengage: With respect to the conditions and terms of the policy to be set up by the company as stipulated in Article 84-B herein, a worker will not be warned, punished, or alternatively subject to disciplinary proceedings if they disregard a job-related message sent after work hours.
Policy regarding the use of technology after hours: Every company has an obligation to set the hours during which workers are not permitted to send or receive work-related emails, messages, or phone conversations. Subject to any rules and regulations that the Secretary of Employment and Labor may establish, the employer will decide the terms and exclusions.
The implementation of this legislation has already started. The Philippine Department of Labor and Employment declared in February 2017 that workers have the freedom to unplug from their jobs after hours by ignoring correspondence pertaining to their jobs without incurring consequences.
The General Alliance of Workers Association, a labor organization in the Philippines, has endorsed the measure. In particular, GAWA is in favor of changing Article 48 to refer to it as undeclared labor. The measure should pass, according to GAWA, because of the risks associated with continuous connectivity, including the possibility of burnout or physical and emotional stress brought on by a lack of sleep.
Bill 27 (the Working for Workers legislation) was approved by the Province of Ontario. It mandates that certain companies set expectations around time away from work. Being separated from work is defined by law as “not participating in job-related interactions, including emails, phone conversations, video conferences, or the delivery or reading of other communications, so as to be unaffected by the performance of the job.”
Companies with over twenty-five workers on January 1st of a particular year are required to establish a procedure by March 1st of that same year; only small enterprises are excluded. As of the time it was passed, the law did not specify what a policy had to include. The statute leaves open the prospect that the government may later demand particular details.
The right to disconnect was incorporated in the Fair Work Law Amendment (Closing Loopholes) Bill 2023, which was passed by the Australian government on 12th February 2024. The goal of the law change is to address the issues around balancing work and life in the digital age.
Employees may disregard work-related messages outside of regular business hours pursuant to the 2009 Fair Work Act modifications, as long as their reluctance to participate is not unreasonable. The Fair Work Commission will monitor disputes and have the authority to impose stop orders to prevent companies from disciplining an employee.
The right to disconnect is comparable to a number of current human rights. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ article 24 on the fundamental right to leisure and rest is the most prominent of them. This right clearly limits how long people can work; the right to disconnect extends this restriction into the contemporary day. Article 23 within the UDHR, which states that all individuals have the right to work, receive fair compensation, and organize trade unions to defend their interests, also intersects with the right to disconnect.
In addition to the right to disconnect, the International Labor Organization is a pertinent source of additional rights and measures. For it to prevent the dissolving of the boundaries between work and personal life, workers must be able to withdraw from technology, according to a recent study supported by the ILO.
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