French workers win 'right to disconnect'
French workers win 'right to disconnect'
Adam PLOWRIGHT AFP December 30, 2016
Paris (AFP) - French companies will be required to
guarantee a "right to disconnect" to their employees from Sunday as
the country seeks to tackle the modern-day scourge of compulsive out-of-hours
email checking.
From January 1, a new employment law will enter into
force that obliges organisations with more than 50 workers to start
negotiations to define the rights of employees to ignore their smartphones.
Overuse of digital devices has been blamed for everything
from burnout to sleeplessness as well as relationship problems, with many
employees uncertain of when they can switch off.
The French measure is intended to tackle the so-called
"always-on" work culture that has led to a surge in usually unpaid
overtime -- while also giving employees flexibility to work from outside the
office.
"There's a real expectation that companies will
seize on the 'right to disconnect' as a protective measure," said Xavier
Zunigo, a French workplace expert, as a new survey on the subject was published
in October.
"At the same time, workers don't want to lose the
autonomy and flexibility that digital devices give them," added Zunigo,
who is an academic and director of research group Aristat.
The measure was introduced by Labour Minister Myriam El
Khomri, who commissioned a report submitted in September 2015 which warned
about the health impact of "info-obesity" which afflicts many
workplaces.
Under the new law, companies will be obliged to negotiate
with employees to agree on their rights to switch off and ways they can reduce
the intrusion of work into their private lives.
If a deal cannot be reached, the company must publish a
charter that would make explicit the demands on and rights of employees
out-of-hours.
Trade unions in France which see themselves as guardians
of France's highly protected workplace and famously short working week of 35
hours have long demanded action.
But the new "right to disconnect", part of a
much larger and controversial reform of French labour law, foresees no sanction
for companies which fail to define it.
- Work-life balancing act -
Left-leaning French newspaper Liberation praised the move
in an editorial on Friday saying that the law was needed because
"employees are often judged on their committment to their companies and
their availability."
Some large groups such as Volkswagen and Daimler in
Germany or nuclear power company Areva and insurer Axa in France have already
taken steps to limit out-of-hours messaging to reduce burnout among workers.
Some measures include cutting email connections in the
evening and weekends or even destroying emails automatically that are sent to
employees while they are on holiday.
A study published by French research group Eleas in
October showed that more than a third of French workers used their devices to
do work out of hours every day.
Around 60 percent of workers were in favour of regulating
to clarify their rights.
But computing and work-life balance expert Anna Cox from
University of College London (UCL) says that companies must take into account
demands from employees for both protection and flexibility.
"For some people, they want to work for two hours
every evening, but want to be able to switch off between 3-5 pm when they pick
their kids up and are cooking dinner," she told AFP.
Others are happy to use their daily commute to get ahead
before they arrive in the office, she explained.
Furthermore, the world of work is changing as rapidly as
technology, with more and more employees working remotely or with colleagues in
other time zones.
"Some of the challenges that come with flexibility
are managing those boundaries between work and home and being able to say
'actually I am not working now'," she said.
One of the positive effects of the law will be to
encourage "conversations with people working together about what their
expectations are."
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