Interview with Craig Reucassel - ABC Sydney Breakfast
E&OE Transcript
CRAIG REUCASSEL, HOST: You might have been hearing today is the day that the right to disconnect laws come in, laws that passed this year. And today you'll be able to legally ignore work communications out of working hours. But who does this apply to? How does it operate? The laws follow similar policies in other countries, but there are questions over how much they will change Australia's culture of working excessive hours. Let me know if you have a plan for this and let me know if you're a business and you don't exactly know how this is going to operate - 1300 222 702. Murray Watt is the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, and he joins us now. Morning, Minister.
MURRAY WATT, MINISTER FOR EMPLOYMENT AND WORKPLACE RELATIONS: G'day Craig, good to be with you.
CRAIG REUCASSEL. So you've asked the Prime Minister not to contact you outside of work hours, I imagine?
MURRAY WATT: Well, he's actually quite respectful of his minions like me, Craig, in terms of his out of hours contact. But even if he were to, it's probably not such an issue for someone like me in a pretty highly paid position with an expectation that you're going to be on call. But the reality is there's so many workers across Australia these days who are in relatively junior positions but are still receiving contact from their boss well after they've stopped being paid. And really, this is just about trying to bring back a bit more work-life balance into people's lives and really get away from the unpaid overtime that people are racking up, feeling like they've got to monitor and respond to calls, text messages and emails well after they've clocked off for the day.
CRAIG REUCASSEL: Minister, this is, I guess, the question, as you say, you're in a high paid job where you expect to be contacted after hours - we had similar calls last time we discussed this, where people said, you know, ‘I'm a lawyer, I know I have to work all weekend and I know I'm in contact with my staff’, but how do people know, is it in your contract? Is it linked to the pay you get? How do people know who and who isn't affected by these laws?
MURRAY WATT: Well, in some cases, it would be covered in people's contracts or in enterprise bargaining agreements. In fact, I'm going to be visiting a school this morning in Canberra, Craig, and their enterprise bargaining agreement provides that right to disconnect for their workers to make sure that teachers, for example, that there's not an expectation that they're going to be responding to every email received from a parent well after the school is finished for the day. And so, in a lot of cases, we have contracts and enterprise behaving agreements that provide for this. But what changes from today is that there is a legal right for an employee, that they don't have to be monitoring and responding to these calls and emails unless it would be unreasonable to do so. And in terms of working out what's unreasonable, what we've said in the legislation is that the Fair Work Commission could take into account the seniority of someone's position. So someone like me in a relatively senior position, there would be more of an expectation that I might respond to emails or calls than someone who's junior within my office. It would take into account the nature of the contact in an emergency situation - of course it would be reasonable to expect that someone would respond to that. But if it's a run-of-the-mill email or phone call that could have waited till the next day when someone's actually being paid to be working, then it probably should wait to that rather than that expectation that people are at their bosses beck and call 24/7 whether they're being paid or not.
CRAIG REUCASSEL: As you say, it comes down to reasonableness, that suggests that there's going to be a lot of kind of back-and-forth and to-and-fro sorting this out and figuring out what this actually means in the next months to come. I mean, presumably it's also going to see legal cases that determine, kind of set a precedent for how this is actually put into place?
MURRAY WATT: That may well be the case, Craig, but when you think about it, that's the way that every new employment right happens, is that the government of the day and the Parliament sets the broad parameters for how the right would apply. And then over time, the right is better defined, whether it be through court cases or something else. But as I say, what we've tried to do within the legislation is give the sort of factors that employers and employees, and then ultimately courts and tribunals should take into account in working out what is reasonable. But the first thing I'd be suggesting is to employers and their workers is to have a conversation about what's reasonable within their workplace. You know, we don't necessarily have to wait until people go to court to fight these things out. I think that most employers and workers are very capable of having a conversation about what is reasonable in their workplace, given the nature of the work that they do, to come to an agreement about what's inbounds and what's out of bounds, so that employers can still get good hard work from their workers, but so their workers can still enjoy their family time, their sport and recreation when they clock off for the day and don't expect to be working because they're not getting paid.
CRAIG REUCASSEL: OK, and for things like if you're a boss and you want to, for instance, you've had people pull out of shifts and you're trying to contact other people, that's not covered by this, is it?
MURRAY WATT: No, that's right, Craig. I mean, we're certainly not saying - and the law doesn't say - that employers have no right to contact their staff outside hours. And I think if we're talking about a situation where a cafe owner, someone calls in sick and they've got to find someone to replace them, it would be fine for them to contact a worker and see if they're available to cover that shift. But what we're really saying is that employees are not obliged to monitor and respond to emails and calls unless if it's unreasonable to do so. And I think most people would be able to come to a common-sense solution about what's reasonable and what's not. A one-off call made very occasionally is fine. If it's persistent emails and persistent text messages from a boss who's maybe a bit too preoccupied with their own work and not thinking about their workers, then people shouldn't be expected to respond to those things, again, because they're not being paid. It's one thing to be responding to your boss when you're being paid, when you're at work, but when you clock off for the day, you should be able to get back to caring for your family, going for a bike ride, whatever it is you like to do after work.
CRAIG REUCASSEL: Jacqui's given us a call. Jacqui, what do you think of the right to disconnect laws?
CALLER: Look, I think they're really fantastic in the sense that I hope that it will produce a cultural shift, both for employers and employees. In that, I'm a psychologist, I see many burnt-out, stressed-out workers. And part of what's becoming a more common thing that I've talked about over the last several years with people is just that ability to switch off. And workers feel guilty if they're not checking their emails. They feel guilty if they're not responding. I had a client just last week who I had to workshop with them not to take their work laptop on a two-day interstate weekend away. There's nothing special going on in their workplace. It was just that feeling of ‘I can't be disconnected’. So, while I don't want to see people necessarily in jail, I think it will just make people stop and think.
CRAIG REUCASSEL: Yeah.
CALLER: Like, ‘how else can I communicate?’. Delay that email - a lot of people like to do a brain dump, you know, when they're thinking of something and send an email. Well do the brain dump, just don't send the email because it puts a lot of stress and anxiety on people to respond.
CRAIG REUCASSEL: Yeah absolutely. Delay.
CALLER: My hope is that it just changes the way people think.
CRAIG REUCASSEL: Yeah, good on you, Jacqui. Fascinating call. Jacqui's call says that people feeling guilty about not responding. But I guess, Minister, the bigger question becomes if somebody feels like, you know, ‘I'm using my rights, I am disconnecting and I'm not actually responding to my boss, but I feel like that, then I'm being punished for that’, what would they do?
MURRAY WATT: Yeah well, that's exactly what this right has intended to cover, Craig. So basically what it would mean is that if someone didn't respond to their boss after hours and some form of punishment took place, whether it was demotion or sacking or reprimand, then they would be able to go to the Fair Work Commission and seek and order from the Fair Work Commission that what they had done was reasonable and that their boss's actions were not reasonable and should be withdrawn. So maybe a reprimand would be withdrawn or whatever kind of punishment was applied could be changed. So that's really what this right is about, is if you like a shield rather than a sword, it's about protecting employees and giving them a right to not be punished or not be penalised if all they're doing is simply saying, ‘you know what? I've clocked off for the day. This is not an emergency situation. I should be allowed to spend time with my family because you're not paying me, and you shouldn't have an expectation that I'm going to be responding immediately’.
CRAIG REUCASSEL: Just lastly, on the topic of the CFMEU, on the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald today, there's a story talking about the CFMEU kind of supporting a scaffolding group that had very bad history and had not paid fines and people had died in their service. Where are we with this? Will the moves that have been taken so far prevent the CFMEU from continuing to support organisations like this, companies like this?
MURRAY WATT: Yeah, I saw that story, Craig. That was just a horrifying story about a young man losing his life and, you know, allegedly as a result of some dealings between the CFMEU and a dodgy firm. And I guess that's partly what this administration process that we've started is really all about. We accept and support the right of construction workers to have a strong and effective union. Construction work is hard, dangerous work, and people who work in the industry deserve that representation, but they also deserve a clean union. And for too long, we've been seeing criminality, corruption and violence surround the construction union and we're determined to clean that out. So, as of Friday, an administrator was installed, an external administrator, to run the union and to ensure that it gets back to doing what it's supposed to do, which is working for the best interests of its members and trying to rid it of this corruption and criminality that, unfortunately, has surrounded this union for too long.
CRAIG REUCASSEL: Well thanks for speaking to us, Minister, and I'm sure we'll talk to you more as this right to disconnect comes in. We'll see if there's instances that need to be clarified. But thank you for setting us up with, I guess, what the principles are at this point.
MURRAY WATT: No worries, Craig.
CRAIG REUCASSEL: Thank you, Minister Murray Watt there, the Employment and Workplace Relations Minister.