The right to disconnect: Leisure is endangered, it must be protected

If one were to go by 21st century work culture, the most hotly-contested resource in the world is neither gold nor oil nor water — it is the ever-dwindling leisure time of the average worker. While employers try to move into the shrinking real estate of weekends and off-hours, some governments are acting in the interest of the beleaguered workers’ work-life balance. The latest is Australia where, just this week, a “right to disconnect” law came into effect. Barring a few exceptions, such as genuine emergencies, employers will no longer be allowed to penalise workers who refuse to respond to work calls and texts when they are out of the office.

The arguments in favour of such laws — as enacted not only by Australia, but also France, Italy and Belgium — emerge from the larger leisure rights movement. They have even found some resonance in India — Member of Parliament Supriya Sule drafted a Private Member’s Bill on the right to disconnect in 2018. While that Bill ultimately languished, it advanced the same argument as legislation elsewhere has: Even as technology has made it possible for newer, more liberating forms of work, like remote and hybrid work, to emerge, it has also allowed the dismantling of the walls that, until the invention of the smartphone, stood between work and leisure. The result is that burnout rates have been steadily rising, affecting not only employee well-being, but also, ultimately, company bottom lines.