Right-to-disconnect legislation being introduced by Ontario Government | Hacker News Reader

Right-to-disconnect legislation being introduced by Ontario Government

cbc.ca

98 pointsneom22 comments

I once had an CEO in Ontario throw a tantrum and demand I quit my new job over non-compete. A letter from a lawyer sent him scurrying back to his flopping business.

What bothers me about empty threats is that they intend to scare the ignorant or unequipped into compliance. Any sort of non-compete ban needs to have teeth and people need to be educated on their rights, or it’s just a waste of time.

The same legislation would ban non-compete clauses. Good stuff.

I didn't see this coming. At this point, I'm waiting for Chairman Doug to redistribute farmland and announce a five-year plan...

Farmland is so passe, redistribute Intellectual Property, and we'd be talking

Can blockchain be somehow integrated into this?

I’m sure there will be a cutout for “critical infrastructure” that includes IT, so they can continue working network and server guys like rented mules.

These cutouts can be made to keep everyone happy. Say, in Switzerland for every hour you worked outside business hours, you get an hour of paid time off. Two hours if you work in the night or on a weekend.

I have a standing policy in every team I run: if you have to work outside of hours, double the amount of time that you worked and round up to the nearest day. Take that many days off as soon as is practical.

The traditional “flex time” is nothing more than a zero-interest temporal loan, encouraging endless borrowing from the back of Sometime After Never.

I deliberately impose a stiff interest rate on that sort of borrowing within any organization I run, because while I recognize that we do need to field emergencies, we also want to penalize the “every day is an emergency” pattern so prevalent in the industry.

Wish I had VP or directors like you. This is a great way to improve the team morale as well as product quality.

Isn't that always going to be 1 day? Or do you mean a nominal 8h (or whatever) work day rather than 24h?

I don’t double the time but I’m on top of OT and always make sure folks take time off. I normally round up but nothing official

Spent months dealing with almost nightly emergencies. Manager would give days off on a whim to be nice.

Destroyed moral of every-one.

A policy would have been better, and would have forced company to stop ignoring problems a lot sooner.

+1, but it takes a good employer to actually adhere to these rules. Enforcement is very lacking.

I don't get why (in any country) it should take more than a phone call to have employee rights enforced.

Some of it comes down to how much compliance there is to the laws in the first place. In an environment where no one is complying, and no one is reporting for fear of losing their job (particularly in environments where you can be laid off without cause fairly easily), standing up for your rights can lead to being dismissed for "unrelated reasons", and future reference calls talking about how you weren't a "team player".

Just having the laws on the books, or even an enforcement mechanism that works is sometimes not enough to get them widely adopted.

It's very easy to get help in Ontario with labour issues, they act swiftly and they have teeth. I've used them and know many others who have and have had great successes. That being said, because enforcement is strong, I don't see a lot of Ontario employers screwing the pooch and I don't suspect it's rampant. Also, only 13 million people live in Ontario,

Why not straight up overtime. That on employer request can be exchanged to time off.

It doesn't sound like the details have been released yet. It sounds nice, but given the government's previous hostility to improving labour wages/benefits, I'd like to see precisely what they are proposing. For all I know they could be planning exclude classes of workers (eg IT workers) from these benefits like they do with overtime pay requirements.

In Ontario, IT people can be forced to work any amount of time per day, with no breaks and no consideration of time off between shifts. You can also be forced to work 7 days a week. You do not get time for lunches or meals in general and you do not get overtime at any time.

You might say 'just quit' but as per OP, you are forced to blindly sign a non-compete and so you're not allowed to get a new job or risk being sued for 1.1million like I did.

"not allowed to get a new job or risk being sued for 1.1million like I did."

Sounds like the deal medieval peasants had with their lord

>Sounds like the deal medieval peasants had with their lord

Oh ya I was certainly a peasant. No question.

The US desperately needs this.

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