Originally published at: Aussies win right to disconnect
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Now do th’ rest of the world!
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Hoping this will reach you during your official ‘office hours’, Rob, you may need to re-read the first sentence of your post and insert the word ‘by’
@beschizza
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When I worked at the Corporate Print Division at Staples, I had to be on rotation for being “on call”. Some plant in Texas would call at 3am trying to print an order, and something with the plates wouldn’t be right and I had to fix them. Or half the time, something was really FUBAR and it had to wait until morning. It was rare I had to take such a call, but it SUCKED when I did. 
My current job, I wouldn’t answer work emails at all - computer is off. If my supervisor texted me it would be an “emergency”, but that’s never happened.
While I guess in some corporate jobs I could see the need to maybe reach people after hours, especially if salaried. But at or near minimum wage? You don’t pay me enough to answer work when I am off. I guess if you opt in for text if you want more hours, ok. Anything else, not my circus, not my monkeys.
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I’ve been saying “fuck you, pay me” for as long as I can remember… Nice to know it’s now a legal right
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I had to do this when cell phones were new and everyone in IT used pagers. Since it was a responsibility shared by a team, it was only an issue for individuals once every 6-8 weeks. 
There are some industries where they never stopped using pagers.
IMO, things went downhill when employers started getting employee and contractor cell numbers and abusing that information to contact them at all hours of the day and night. Now we’ve got workers complaining about getting business calls during their vacations. The only way to win that game is not to play. There are lots of services for getting an alternative number to share with companies, and many explanations for why a worker might miss a bunch of after-hours messages. My network used to be famously unreliable, as well as my phone battery, cell network, etc…
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When Covid-19 first hit and we were WFH, I had a phone app (VOIP) for my work phone calls on my personal cellphone. After six months, the app killed my cell, so I picked up my business phone from the office to use until I got a new phone.
When I finally received my replacement cell, I told my boss that I wouldn’t use the app since it killed my previous cellphone and that I wouldn’t add my work email account back onto my new personal cellphone either. I told him that if somebody were to sue our company it could be subject to any legal discovery.
Not sure if that’s true, but it seemed to work!
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… how did that work exactly
Apps should not be destroying hardware 
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I should add that I’m suspicious that it killed my phone. I think the app was running all the time in the background even though it was turned outside of business hours. It would pop on randomly on weekends and evenings. My phone ran hot, too. It also was really hard to disconnect from phone calls (I’d hang up and the caller would still be on the phone). I have all the same apps on my newer phone that I had on my previous phone, except the VOIP app, and its been almost four years.
It’s funny but our payroll app on my work computer constantly requests that I give them my cell number for 2FA (I won’t). We also have a server on the cloud and they wanted my cell number for 2FA login. I told them that that they’d have to use my work email since my phone is personal. They got pretty annoyed about doing this way, but I told them my company doesn’t pay for my phone.
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