Government urged to include 'right to disconnect' in UK Employment Bill

Support for the policy crosses party lines across Labour and Conservative voters

A large trade union has written to the UK business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, requesting he include a 'right to disconnect' policy in the UK's upcoming Employment bill.

According to Prospect, which has about 150,000 members including scientists, engineers, managers and civil servants, the move will help workers to keep their personal and professional lives separate.

Prospect says its own recent survey found that 66 per cent of home workers in the country want to see a right-to-disconnect policy in the Employment Bill.

Such a policy would require businesses consult with their staff and finalise rules on when employees could not be contacted for work-related duties. It would ensure that, for example, managers could not email staff with the expectation they would complete tasks outside normal working hours, unless they have agreed to it.

The survey found strong support for the policy across all age groups, and also among voters from all political parties: 65 per cent of Labour voters and 53 per cent of Conservative voters said they would support the move.

Nearly 30 per cent of remote workers Prospect talked to complained they were doing more unpaid hours than before, while 35 per cent said that their work-related mental health had got worse during the pandemic. 42 per cent of those said it was partly a result of their inability to switch off from office work after normal working hours.

"I feel like I am living from work rather than working from home," one of the survey respondents said.

Andrew Pakes, Prospect research director, said a right-to-disconnect policy for UK workers would be a major step in "redrawing the blurred boundary between home and work."

It would also show that the government was serious in dealing with "the dark side of remote working," he added.

Ireland issued new government guidance last week, granting all workers a fundamental right to switch off from work-related duties outside of their normal working hours.

The new code practice mandates that all employees, no matter whether they are working in an office or remotely, have the right to disconnect at the end of the day, without being required to respond to calls, text messages, emails, or other work-related communications.

The federal government in Canada is also planning to introduce a similar policy. Canada's Minister for Labour, Filomena Tassi, said that such a policy would particularly help female workers, who spend nearly 33 per cent more time than men on unpaid work like household tasks and caring responsibilities.