A California 'Right to Disconnect'?
wsj.com
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Also, doesn't that price-for-performance information need to be not merely explicit but public as well, so that the free-market can fulfill certain economists' promises about it optimally allocating resources using price signals for the good of all mankind, etc?
As a liberal cynic (if it wasn't obvious already) I often feel there's a certain degree of hypocrisy in some of these appeals, where they claim to be motivated by "free market" principles while going against those principles to promote corporatism. The "flexibility" they want to preserve is the "flexibility" of employers to impose uncompensated demands of employees that are outside of the employment contract.
Do Californian employment contracts not work that way? These contracts are supposed to be about swapping employee hours for employment money. Do they not write down the hours and the money in the contract? That seems like important information.
So although your employment contract might not say it, your employer can tell you "I need you to be available to take my calls 24/7 or you're fired".
They may as well have a law saying "your employment contract (still) outlines the conditions that you work under". Ie, they're not changing anything. There is already a piece of paper saying what your work hours are, and calling it a "right" instead of a "contractual obligation" doesn't impact the power balance here, at all. If an employee can't hold them to contract they can't hold them to any other law either.
Having a contract that outlines a 40 hour work week is already about as strong as it gets that the deal here is a 40 hour work week. I don't see how to improve on that. Calling the contract something else doesn't seem like it has a lot of impact.
US employees don't get that sort of thing. At best, we get a not-actually-a-contract "offer letter" that says something about here is the job you're being offered, the salary, and the job description (generally including the weasely phrase "other duties as assigned." Because we don't have binding contracts with our employers, we don't even have that baseline of "a contract that outlines a 40 hour work week."
Instead it provides a mechanism for employees to complain to government authorities who can fine the company.
If it isn't in your contract then you don't need to perform the duty. Perhaps some might say, "Aha! But employees don't have an equal footing in this power dynamic, therefore exploitation!". Which would lead me to assume that contracts are worthless if they are unenforceable. So yes, whatever passes for a market in California should be able to handle it without further intervention from the state.
Interestingly, laissez-faire is or was once considered "liberal", but here we are.
Did some searching, and:
> (b) An employer shall establish a workplace policy that provides employees the right to disconnect from communications from the employer during nonworking hours.
> (c) Nonworking hours shall be established by written agreement between an employer and employee.
> (d) An employer may contact an employee during nonworking hours for an emergency or for scheduling.
So it looks like employer can't put a blanket "you agree to respond to anything at any time" thing in their contracts, at least not without also defining "working hours" as 24/7.
Even then I wouldn't take the deal.
What I do and where I am after hours is none of anyone's business but my own.
https://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?d=4550814585281586&w=lm2y5QV...
If you want to pay someone to be on call, rock on. If you're not going to pay them, why do you expect them to donate their nights and weekends to you?
It just doesn't make sense.
Some of the worst abuse comes from service work where you can be called in on your day off. This is the white collar reflection.
But so long as democracy works, that should be possible, simply due to math.
Like any system, economic systems have the potential to collapse to a vacuum state (which is big bad in this context). The practical solution is an alignment of incentives and goals.
How do we work towards an economy and social structures that are fault-tolerant at an abstract level? Can failing economic systems achieve stability by merging with upstream principles of provable market dynamics?
This paper is interesting: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5051728/ Although I think it needs much more research in economic theory.
People take advantage, commit violence, organize at a high level to constrain market dynamics. The free market is largely a myth to begin with. Can we open gateways to participation by liquidating or distributing assets in a non-violent way?
Maybe we can invest in non-tangible assets such as life-expectancy or a happiness index. Maybe we can steer existing markets towards longevity and away from short-term profit extraction.
The potential is huge, but risks destabilization and unknown reformation. Unions seem like a great solution in the US economic system. We're in for an exciting few decades.
In my experience it's fine to stop push notifications for email/chat messages after hours and "call me" if it's an emergency. I often get 'urgent' emails and chats that aren't really urgent, but people rarely want to call you unless it's something truely important. Nor should people send email for urgent generally, I think that's expect a reply within 24hrs channel type environment.
I feel for society we need stinger rules to balance work/life. A great one would be something like like for employees under $200k it's the employers responsibility to ensure they are working their 40hrs or pay overtime plus right to claim bad extra hours on leaving a job. Add to that some serious overtime rate minimums like 2x or 3x for weekend and out of hours.
Ultimately we should aim build a society for good living and a productive economy is part of that, but not more important.
You might find it in startups and technical staff that is on call but that's it. At least for the average worker.
But labor laws are pretty strong here. I don't think my boss would dare criticizing me for not responding on slack after a certain time.
But to be honest if I am not at work my work phone is off/silent and away from my reach anyway, so I don't know if such a rule really would have any impact on me. But this is also because of the surrounding labor laws, which e.g. has mandated and enforced maximum work hours per day, etc.
Edit: nevermind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_disconnect
Aside, and from a west-coast-but-not-SV perspective... isn't this a mis-labeling?
I thought "tech bros" were the folks who actually work in marketing synergy or become entrepreneurs or whatever--"tech" just delineates the industry they landed in. Their hours are based on schmoozing and start early enough to call people on the east coast.
That's not the same as the folks rolling in at lunch because they binge-coded from 8PM-2AM.