Remote work is prone to overtime – we demand the right to disconnect!

A discussion on the Remote Work Act is ongoing. Many important elements have been mentioned so far, but one, crucial for us, is still overlooked.

International experience shows that employees performing their duties remotely work longer than people present at the workplace. They are doing more overtime and employers are more likely to violate the rules on working time.

Therefore, we propose to include in the Labour Code the right of the employee to be offline, that is, not to engage in telephone and electronic communication related to work duties outside working hours. Employees should be able to disconnect from the company in order to maintain the boundaries between their professional and personal lives. We believe that the employees’ availability regarding e-mail or telephone communication should be treated as working time. Receiving calls from your employer or responding to business correspondence is a job that should be remunerated. When such regulations are included in the Labour Code, employees will be able to demand remuneration for the entire time they are available to the employer in the labour court. This way, the definition of overtime, for which employees would have to receive additional remuneration, would be extended.