Duty hours

[Jonathan Buhacoff]

Proposal:

Employers must be clear about the hours that employees are required to work. If employees are expected to be available to answer any communication outside of these hours such as calls, texts, or emails, employees must be compensated for this additional duty. Without additional compensation for after-hours communications, employers should not expect employees to answer communications until their scheduled work hour, and must not retaliate against employees for not answering communications after hours if they are not being compensated for it. Employers must include a note in job descriptions about any requirements for after-hours communications and the associated compensation. All after-hours communications must be via designated “work devices” or “work apps” such that employees can choose to be attentive to them or not (silencing or shutting down the device or the app when they don’t want to be interrupted).

Discussion:

Being alert to work messages after hours can cause increased anxiety and stress for some people and be mentally or emotionally “draining”. People should be able to know if they job they are applying for requires after-hours communication and how much more money they will receive in exchange, and people should feel safe that if they aren’t being paid for after-hours communications that there’s no expectation of answering such communications until they are back at work. This doesn’t mean employers can’t send the communications at all — it just means there’s no expectation of a reply until the employee is back at work. In this sense, this proposal is different than other “right to disconnect” proposals. However, all such after-hours communications must happen using designated work devices or apps so that if an employee is not required to respond, they can silence the device or the app.

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