Generally, no.
When i was on call i was paid $80 every time i answered the phone and it was a company phone, you will find most companies that are getting complaints are calling people on their personal phone and getting them to talk someone through complex issues outside work hours for free.




I can not tell you what decision will work best for you but i can tell you after i retired my wife decided to cut her hours back by 12 per week instead of working more hours and trying to keep ladder climbing and not only is she much happier on her 32 hour week salary, our relationship improved massively and in our 17 years together we have never been closer.

This post was edited by Plaguefear on Feb 20 2024 08:45pm

I can recall an employee claiming the allowance for meals if you work over 10 hours which you do every single day including weekends in busy season and it's I your contract that you can.

I legitimately thought that the partners we're going to erase that employees existence from earth when they tried to claim it for the 8 dollar subway sandwich they bought.

My worry is that even with legislation favourable to employees you worry about retaliation and so you're going to be one of those employees that say yes you can still call me I'll be the slave please give me my 5k raise.

Just like the guy who claimed that one meal. Sure he got his 8 bucks back but I guarantee it just prevented his next ad hoc raise.

Good luck proving its retaliation too.

This post was edited by SBD on Feb 20 2024 08:46pm

Most of the people being exploited are in job roles where they are only getting raises from cpi based on an enterprise bargaining agreement or minimum wage increases, they may be overlooked for promotion but those promotions are traps, once they get you on salary they own you.

I don't think that's entirely true, I think the finance and accounting industry is rampant with exploit and its absolutely common in that world to just hand ad hoc raises. Favourable relationships with the partner and associates is everything. They're going to favour the slaves.

And you're not going to not be a slave because you know it will be frowned upon.

And I think if we're being honest. For every one ambitious person in government there's 5 much smarter individuals working privetly to circumvent new rules.

I look at taxation. The second there's a new unfavourable tax law getting to be ready to be passed in the house of Commons there's dozens of lawyers and hundreds of tax accountants looking at how to avoid or exploit it.

I'm not saying it's not a good first step. I'm just saying it's no home run. Progress is progress though.

This post was edited by SBD on Feb 20 2024 08:57pm

Ah true, probably also true in tech sections, i can only really comment from my experience in retail and executive roles, when i was mining you would get a call asking where something was or how to start something but it was never egregious.

It's a good first step and now there just needs to be actual and meaningful enforcement and a way to try to prevent it being punitive to those who do want to disconnect but absolutely perform well during their regular work hours.

Hopefully we get there.

There is still the real point YeeHaw was making though.

If an employee doesn't care, they WANT to work more hours and gain greater training and take less pay and "be owned" by the company, who are you to say no?

At it's heart, employment terms are a negotiated factor. If you start saying that certain terms are unacceptable by law, you may not merely be harming the employer, but the employee as well.

I don't have interest working 100 hours a week. I prefer having time to focus on my own home, and improving the lives of myself and my wife. The more time I dedicate to making someone else a profit, the less time I have to focus on what really matters. Flipside, there are certainly 18-25 year olds who're single, living in a shoebox-sized apartment with 3 roommates. That person may actively WANT to work 100 hours a week. The extra training, experience, and facetime will all help them push up the ladder at a higher rate, and they aren't in a position where "off time" is particularly beneficial to them. Should they be barred from doing what they want to do, simply because we don't think that's what they should do?

But I think if you look at it as a whole, there's not choice. There's major employers and everyone has to work or you can starve and not have a roof over your head. It's not a choice to want to eat and have shelter and since there's limited major employers you're often going to be subjected to those exploits and it's not exactly negotiable.

It's not there's millions and millions of vacant job positions where people can just go to a different employer that respects your rights or is open to negotiating. We can all list some but you have to think as a whole or an entier countries job market.

And with the rise in cost of virtually everything especially rents in some countries, take Canada for instance. There's not much choice happening. Think the average person is feeling like they're between a rock and a hard place right now.

This post was edited by SBD on Feb 20 2024 09:13pm

Nothing stops them from doing this.

That was mostly in regards to the talk of enforcement. It's fine to have a law that says "schedule for your needs, employees have a right to disconnect and you can't take action against them for it." Where it gets tetchy is when you start talking about imposing enforcement of such a law, and determining that rather than taking things case by case, it's easier just to fine every employer who contacts employees off hours without express consent, for instance.

Does that make sense?