The Australian Financial Review reports that lawyers and employer groups in Australian have warned that legislating a right to disconnect from work would undermine the move towards more flexible working and damage competitiveness in the global economy. The Australian Services Union this week launched a campaign to embed the right in the Fair Work Act after a survey of 154 clerical and administrative workers found that seven out of 10 were regularly performing work outside agreed working hours.

However, lawyers and employer groups have pushed back against the suggestion, arguing that introducing a universal right to disconnect from work, which would allow employees to ignore work calls and emails outside of working hours unless there is an emergency, was overly prescriptive as every workplace is different. Instead, they suggest that individual firms and their employees should be left to negotiate their own policies to ensure workers can disconnect from work, as recently happened in the Finance Sector Union’s dealings with ANZ, NAB and Bank of Queensland.

Jessica Tinsley, director of workplace relations at the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said a universal right to disconnect from work was “a step back” for flexible working and did not align with the needs of a modern 24-hour economy. “If businesses are forced to operate inside the traditional working day, they will not be able to effectively provide competitive services in the international marketplace,” Tinsley said.

Emeline Gaske, assistant national secretary of the Australian Services Union, said the union was pushing for the right to be enshrined in the Fair Work Act because “as our research this week has shown, most employees don’t feel that they can say no to the increasing expectation that they will take work home with them”.