Australia is looking to make changes allowing employees to unplug after hours. Naturally some people and politicians (guess who) are arguing that depriving businesses of billions of dollars in free unpaid after hours labour are bad for the economy.

What do out resident auzzies make of lazy gen z not wanting to work for free after hours?

https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/the-big-error-at-heart-of-right-to-disconnect-opposition/
Research indicates the average Australian worker performs 280 hours of unpaid overtime per year, equating to more than $130 billion across the labour market.

The new legislation’s ‘reasonableness’ test still grants employers great scope to contact workers out of hours when it is genuinely necessary.

Nevertheless, merely affirming that workers don’t need to be on call 24-7, and should be allowed to turn off their devices after work, has sparked loud complaints from old-school guardians of work attitudes.

Some said it’s not the “spirit with which we built our great nation”. Others lambasted Gen-Z’s for not appreciating the realities of work.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton took a macroeconomic view point, arguing the law would weaken Australia’s productivity, and vowed to repeal the provision in a future Coalition government.

But his critique revealed both questionable political judgment and flawed economic logic.

Politically, no opposition leader wants to be on the wrong side of public opinion, but that’s exactly where Mr Dutton has placed himself on this issue.

Surveys indicate a strong majority of Australians think a right to disconnect is fair: A Centre for Future Work report shows 84 per cent of employed Australians expressed support or strong support for a federally mandated right to disconnect.

Depending on the job you voluntarily accept, you may have to answer questions after you leave. I think it comes down to puss poor attitude towards the business that pays your bills. I see this constantly in my workplace. As soon as somebody gets in the car to leave everything becomes somebody else’s problem. That is true to an extent. Sometimes we need key information from somebody who isn’t physically on the job site. When you accept a salary position here, you are required to bring your computer and work phone home and be available. If you are hourly, answering a quick phone call or text isn’t unpaid overtime, it is a courtesy to keep things running smoothly.

If I charged my company every time I answered my phone at home I’d be driving a Bugatti to Walmart.

It's not exactly difficult to understand why so many Gen z are not going to be or willing to work free hours. The value proposition of work isn't there anymore.

With housing out pacing wages significantly from the late 90s onward there's no reward at the end of the tunnel. There's no family, plus a home a dog and two cars in the driveway off of even low six figures anymore for most.

I agree with this. I get paid overtime for any phone call I take. I also get paid 4 hrs ot on top of hours worked for being called into the plant.

Absolutely, you take here in Canada, its virtually impossible to own a home in the most populated areas now. Why on earth would you ever give free hours. Sadly, you get people who can only think anecdotally, they will say things like, move away from the city, you can own xyz over here for cheap. If everyone did that, xyz would just become expensive. We saw it during COVID when you could work form home and people exited the city, the city didn't get cheaper and the more rural areas exploded in price making it completely unaffordable to the people that resided in those towns already and rented with homes surging over 100%.

We have a supply issue, it wont matter if people move from the city areas. It just moves the problem to more areas.

Its not a kids wont pull themselves up by their bootstraps or they're lazy issue. You need incentives, just covering rent and eating is not an incentive to doing better and most Canadians at-least feel they have nowhere to go beyond that, because most don't. The incentive of the house with the white picket fence is dead because it no longer exists.



This post was edited by SBD on Feb 18 2024 10:23am

i think it was the IRS that coined the term or use the term "disposable income? what a bunch of creeps

oh someone's definitely driving a bugatti alright, it's quite easy when you steal billions of dollars every year via wage theft

https://www.epi.org/publication/employers-steal-billions-from-workers-paychecks-each-year/

A boomer manager pal of mine seethes about this and it totally cracks me up. He was on his yearly vacation in the Florida Keys and he said he had to spend hours trying to settle some issue.

If it's your business, it's your problem to solve. Telling people they have to care rarely works.

There's a key distinction to make here:

"Occasional, rare instances where someone has to answer a quick question during off-hours because of a genuine emergency"
VS
"Systematically being expected to be available and/or put hours of work in during off-time because the company is systematically understaffed and undertrained and relies on the after-hour work of its key employees to keep labor costs down."


Or, to put it more bluntly: the distinction between an employer acting in good faith and one which seeks to maximize profits by exploiting its personnel.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Feb 19 2024 07:18pm