Prospect: We must fight to ensure every worker has the right to disconnect

The global pandemic has changed the national conversation in many ways. But for trade unions, perhaps no debate has been transformed as much as that around working from home, and its associated rewards and risks. Even before the pandemic, one of the issues we were noticing was the ‘always-on’ culture and the increasingly blurred line between work and home life. Technology is changing the way we are managed and work. For many people, greater use of technology has brought freedom. But it also has another side – an increasingly connected world has created the expectation that workers are available to answer emails or take calls beyond normal office hours.

The growth of technology has accelerated during the pandemic – from most of us using Zoom or other platforms to stay in touch with each other, through to employers showing an increasing interest in a creepier end of surveillance technology. Now that we are set to enter a new lockdown, many of us will be going back to the question of whether we are working from home or living in the office. Technology is creeping into every part of our working lives but we don’t always get a say over when and how it is used, even when it is in our own homes. This blurred line between work and home raises many issues, including ‘hidden overtime’, the mental health impact for workers who feel they cannot switch off and the way it can undermine equal opportunities.

Today, as part of our ‘union week’, Prospect is launching a new guide to help workers challenge and organise around this always-on culture. We have learned from trade unions across Europe, who have been successfully making the case for a ‘right to disconnect’. This refers in short to the right of employees to disconnect from their work and to not receive or answer any work-related emails, calls or messages outside of normal working hours.

Workers in countries such as France, Germany, Spain and Argentina have already won legislation that safeguards negotiation or offers boundaries over this encroachment of work into home life. We are now urging employers, business groups and the government to consider how we make this work in the UK. This matters both now, as we continue to struggle with the pandemic and for the future, as we know digitalisation will further change jobs. If we want to make slogans such as ‘build back better’ real, we need to consider the quality of work not just the quantity of jobs.

How bad is the problem? Evidence was already building before the pandemic. According to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, 15% of employees constantly monitor work emails outside work hours and another 25% check them at least five times a day. But it is also important to recognise that the impact of this culture is felt unequally. Government research has shown that expectations of constant availability, especially when taken “as a proxy for commitment and merit”, can severely disadvantage workers with caring responsibilities, the majority of which continue to be women.

Our research has shown that workers are not confident about how technology will impact their lives or on how it will be used to monitor, track and extend the working day. That is why we have been working with our EU colleagues in Uni Global Union and with the Institute for the Future of Work on equality, data and technology.

But the absence of a UK right to disconnect in law does not mean that nothing can be done, which is why we are launching our new guide to help reps and activists to negotiate their own agreements with employers. These agreements can take many forms, ranging from strict rules about when managers can contact their team members to regular reminders in work calendars about reasonable expectations about working hours. It is clear that a one-size-fits-all approach will not be able to capture the complexity of this debate. But what is essential is that employers engage with their workers about these issues and ensure that appropriate systems are put in place to enforce the idea of work-life balance in the face of technological change.