Germany bans managers from calling or emailing staff after work hours
ibnlive.in.com
ibnlive.in.com
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E-mail is a type of communication where the receiver can be in control of receipt and response. Should a manager type up an e-mail (if it's after work hours), save it, then write a note (or schedule a delayed send) to send it in the morning? It seems cumbersome and seems like it wouldn't address the core problem, unlike telephone calls.
The idea behind these rules is to make it crystal-clear that no one can expect you to be reachable outside of office, which became somewhat a problem in the last years.
At my current employer, the typical US 50h+ weeks would be squashed by the works council.
I'm on the east coast in the U.S. and I have colleagues in Britain, Germany, California, Colorado, and Minneapolis. If we stuck to strict working hours, we'd never be able to communicate in real time!
The guys in Europe sometimes are helping us until 10pm or 11pm which is not a requirement but they're just dedicated and we really appreciate it. By the same token, I'll get on a call at 6am local time, which works for them.
But maybe not everyone has to deal with all these time zones. We're a little crazy.
Yes, and I do work a lot with Asia actually.
On the projects that require me not to do it, we have special agreements in place, where people are also compensated for sacrificing their private life in name of the employers profits.
> The guys in Europe sometimes are helping us until 10pm or 11pm which is not a requirement but they're just dedicated and we really appreciate it. By the same token, I'll get on a call at 6am local time, which works for them.
Not all companies have works councils, which leads to the following situations:
We have the guys fresh out of university feeling that they will improve their career by working like crazy. Only to discover a few years later that they get to be fired like everyone else on the company.
There are lots of people working as freelancer and getting paid by the hour. Obviously they are their own boss and work as much as they feel like like it.
Not all companies have a works council that actively cares about the fellow employees, in such cases many people don't report back to them unlawful situations due to fear of what their boss might do.
I worked for multiple larger corps as a freelancer and they are very strict about "8 hours per day". They did the math and know that if I work 10, they pay 2 hours for the same price, but at less efficiency.
Also, all the jobs you mentioned have contractual clauses regulating that, like payment for emergency work and payment for on-call duty.
Is this such a problem that the some Labor Ministry has to enforce a rule?
Think of this in another context: would people be okay with Olympic Trainers being banned from asking their athletes to train after hours?
Dunno, don't have the data.
Anecdotally: I get called after hours from time to time, but then again I get paid a lot in return. Calling me after work, whatever you want, costs several hundred pounds a go.
My sister, who works a bunch of part time jobs in retail and other minimum wage things get called on after hours as well. And she doesn't get paid for it beyond not being fired. She'd never dare tell one of her managers not to call her after work, because if she loses one of her jobs she's going to have trouble paying her bills.
In my case the conditions in my contract ensure that I only get called if it's important. That's my protection from being constantly exploited. But... my sister doesn't have that - and frankly has no hope of ever having it.
Should it be legal to take that sort of advantage of someone in that weak a bargaining position? We have the concept of undue influence in contract law, and this strikes me as the same sort of thing.
It's like when you have a contract between two companies, the companies are expected to be protected by having a contract that they both understand and have negotiated from positions of relative equality. Whereas, between companies and individuals, the individual is generally expected to be mostly protected by the allowances of consumer protection law.
> would people be okay with Olympic Trainers being banned from asking their athletes to train after hours?
Well, I would. If the athlete does it of their own free will, then that's fine. But if they're being coerced by a desire not to get fired... well, 'Fuck you, pay me.' springs to mind.
Agreed. Exploiting = bad.
Isn't that newspeak for what we used to call hard work?
What's a manager ? What are staff ?
Presuming that the state has formalized definitions for these things, what is the purpose ? Why is it assumed that someone is, or has, an employer, and why would we pigeonhole people into extremely narrow (and increasingly irrelevant) social roles ?