[HN Gopher] Portugal bans bosses texting staff after-hours
___________________________________________________________________
Portugal bans bosses texting staff after-hours
Author : buro9
Score : 208 points
Date : 2021-11-12 16:43 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.co.uk)
| ineptech wrote:
| The article uses "text" and "call" and "contact" as if they're
| indistinguishable - what actually got banned here? There's a huge
| difference between discussing a task for someone in a team
| channel and @-ing them and emailing them and SMSing them.
| ineptech wrote:
| I tried to answer my own question, but can't find any
| specifics. CNN says "phone, message or email", AP says
| "contact", thehill says "email". None of them have a link to
| more details or the text of the law (which ought to be the bare
| fucking minimum in a news article about a law, but this is the
| internet now I guess).
| BaRRaKID wrote:
| It's probably just an issue with trying to translate the
| original source. But the law uses the term "contact", so AP
| is correct.
| ineptech wrote:
| Thank you, I guess I just naively assumed the law would be
| more specific or would define the term more narrowly; but I
| suppose the courts will do that.
| BaRRaKID wrote:
| Mandatory "Portuguese here". All forms of communication are
| banned. Unless it's an emergency, and this is where it gets a
| bit grey because they haven't defined what exactly is an
| emergency, so things will probably stay the same in most cases.
| mysterydip wrote:
| "This is an emegency. I can't print."
| ineptech wrote:
| Thanks! That sure sounds overbroad - would it include, say,
| "Can y'all take a look at the XYZ server tomorrow" being
| posted in a team's slack channel? Also, is it just limited to
| the supervisor, or is it any work-related messages?
| BaRRaKID wrote:
| The specifics aren't yet known, they only approved the
| generality of the law. But the news only mentions
| employers, so it doesn't seem like it will include co-
| workers. Also your example would be considered an
| infraction.
|
| Another reason why it won't mean much is that the employee
| is the one that needs to make a complain with the work
| authority, and then work authority has to evaluate the case
| and decide it they will issue a fine or not.
|
| So what this really means is that if my boss contacts me
| after work hours I can (and should) ignore him without any
| repercussions.
| ineptech wrote:
| Ahhh thank you this makes a lot more sense - the law
| doesn't need to define "contact" very closely, if there
| is a review board that decides whether to fine, rather
| than an automatic fine.
| amiga-workbench wrote:
| If the law does exclude that, then slack does have a
| scheduled message function. I use that feature rather than
| disturbing people out of hours. On a weekend I don't want
| to be thinking about work, so I apply the same courtesy to
| others.
| polaris_mars wrote:
| In Portugal is the state that micro manages you and your company.
| Normal_gaussian wrote:
| Yes, the pesky state sets minimum breaks, maximum weekly hours,
| minimum wage, anti-discrimination law, anti-bullying law,
| minimum age to work, minimum safety requirements.
|
| It would be a much better world if our neighbours 9 year old
| was sent down to the local pencil factory every night for six
| hours and ay weekends to pick up the pencils that ocassionally
| fly out of the machine into those hard to reach areas between
| the conveyor belts and sharpening machines. He could make a few
| dollars a day and pay for his own food and clothes!
| polaris_mars wrote:
| Yes. Once your country catches with the rest of developed
| world then yes you can have slack to have nice things such as
| all those minimum standards you mentioned. But with this
| Portugal will remain a back water coutry forever. I have
| friends that were telling me 10 years ago that Portugal will
| be the California of Europe. Nice weather welcoming culture,
| education going up. Who would not want to set up office
| there?? Nop, I told them. Portugal is the Mexico of Europe.
| You get taxed to death and anyone without connections but
| with ability just emigrantes.
|
| Why don't you go to Bangladesh and ask them to set minimum
| wage laws and maximum working hours? It would help Portugal
| more than this law, but not so sure about Bangladesh...
|
| I'm Portuguese btw and know very well what I'm talking about.
| Just crossing the border to Spain makes big difference in a
| young guy's prospects in life.
| csee wrote:
| I am generally against worker protection for things that
| are voluntarily agreed on.
|
| The problem is that bosses can sneakily introduce things
| that weren't agreed on, and this is usually bad for the
| worker because the worker has less power in the
| relationship, there are frictions to switching jobs, they
| have leverage over your reputation, and resolving the
| dispute via government or the courts is impractical and
| expensive.
|
| This can be thought of as a type of mild fraud, where two
| parties came to a contractual agreement that one party then
| violated (or perhaps it's a grey area that wasn't
| explicitly covered contractually).
|
| This is why everyone should be in favor of some basic level
| of worker protection. Even if you're a hard libertarian -
| as they are purportedly against fraud, too.
| polaris_mars wrote:
| Search premature imitation.
| klarstrup wrote:
| I would've preferred to see this come by way of union power,
| but government bought is ok
| csee wrote:
| It's better done through government, as is minimum wage and
| other worker protections. Unions have systematic downsides
| that are avoided if worker protection is achieved via
| government.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| "Parents will be allowed to work at home indefinitely without
| seeking prior approval from their employers until their child
| turns eight." There have to be some sort of limits on this left
| out of the article. I cant think a cashier can elect to work from
| home if they have a 4 year old.
| zz865 wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29149785
| siruncledrew wrote:
| It's nice to set an expectation for work life balance.
|
| How does this situation work for "flexible hours" though?
|
| Or it this kind of expecting something like you only work 9-5pm
| and can't be contacted outside those times.
| klarstrup wrote:
| it says "out of working hours", even if your hours are flexible
| they're still working hours I would say
| one_off_comment wrote:
| Not quite "bans". They could face fines, which means it's legal
| for a price.
| gherkinnn wrote:
| What about a team's WhatsApp group? (every co-located team has
| one) What does a boss do when asking the rest of team where they
| went off for drinks?
|
| It isn't obvious from the linked article.
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| It sounds like they _may_ face fines for this. So, if they 're
| just asking which pub to meet at, I don't think they'd receive
| a fine for that.
| hugoromano wrote:
| (Portuguese here) Portuguese Parliament and Government publish
| law every day and afterhours[1], as a citizen I have to keep up
| with this. MPs believe they are doing a great job by producing
| more Law, instead of checking if what is in place is accountable.
| A common behaviour is when a "crime" case is well covered by the
| media, the first thing is said "we need to change the Law",
| trying to dodge blame.
|
| I have been working remote for 17 years, and the teams I worked
| in, work asynchronously. It is fine to text, slack, discord and
| email after hours, people don't expect to get answers
| immediately, they will reply according to their schedule or
| contract.
|
| One case is that employers have to compensate employees for
| electricity and utilities for working remote, in my case that is
| a cost of EUR10.58, I save much more for not commuting,
| financially and psychologically.
|
| [1] https://dre.pt/dre/home
| andrepd wrote:
| In tech jobs, you probably are in a bubble. Most jobs won't
| have such respecting bosses, it's pretty much the norm in many
| places to demand unpaid work after-hours. The move to remote
| work has worsened this problem because the line between work
| hours and off-work hours is even more blurred.
| gkop wrote:
| > I have been working remote for 17 years
|
| This suggests you are likely a member of the professional
| class. A lot of labor regulation in the US (my country) is
| intended to protect the working class, not the professional
| class. Perhaps that was the intention of your politicians?
|
| (This legislation does sound like treating a symptom, and not
| unlikely to have unintended detrimental consequences. But we
| should still empathize with and consider the needs of those
| workers less privileged than ourselves)
| dymk wrote:
| That the law might work in one case doesn't justify it as a
| good law - the law should consider at least some of the edge
| cases, especially if it's going to negatively impact such a
| large class of workers as the "professional class".
|
| It's also unclear that there's no scenario in which the non
| "professional class" would benefit from being able to be
| texted by their boss.
| gkop wrote:
| Where in my comment are you getting that I think it's a
| good law? Bluntly, with my very limited context (no, I
| didn't read the article), it sounds like a dumb law. I take
| to heart original commenter's complaint that their
| country's politicians produce a large volume of dumb laws,
| I hope disgust with the median politician is something we
| can all agree on.
| kaycebasques wrote:
| Can we open up a broader discussion about Portugal's culture of
| work? On one hand this sends a message that Portugal cares about
| work/life balance for everyday citizens. On the other my general
| impression of Portugal's economy is that it's one of the weaker
| members of the EU. High debt, not a huge driver of innovation,
| wealth, etc. These are all just loosely held beliefs kicking
| around in my head. I'm not attached to any of them or sure that
| they are even accurate.
| BaRRaKID wrote:
| You're partially right.
|
| Portugal is in the middle of a work culture change. For the
| last maybe 5 or so years, many tech companies have opened
| offices here, and with that they brought a better work/life
| balance, better salaries, better everything, for people working
| in those companies.
|
| On the other hand a typical "old school" Portuguese boss
| expects you to work more than the standard 8 hours and not be
| paid for it. In many many places you're shamed by co-workers if
| you leave on time (leaving earlier isn't even an option), or if
| you need to take days off for personal reasons. It's also not
| unusual to make it hard for people to take vacation days (we
| have 21 days of vacations per year), and even when you do take
| vacations you are expected to be available if needed. All this
| for a minimum wage of 665EUR.
|
| Regarding the Portuguese economy, we are somewhere in the
| middle of Europe. We have many industries where we are probably
| the best in the world, but they are smaller less flashy
| industries. Namely things like wine, cork, shoes, ceramics (as
| in toilets), glass, etc. But we have many financial issues,
| manly due to huge amount of corruption in government and
| financial institutions. If you're interested in those search
| for Operation Marquis and Face Oculta scandal.
|
| Regarding this law in particular, it was made so that people
| that are working from home due to COVID can log off an not have
| people calling for extra work after hours. It has been a real
| issue. For me personally I've been working average 10 hours a
| day the last two years.
| jointpdf wrote:
| > _...boss expects you to work more than the standard 8 hours
| and not be paid for it. In many many places you 're shamed by
| co-workers if you leave on time (leaving earlier isn't even
| an option), or if you need to take days off for personal
| reasons. It's also not unusual to make it hard for people to
| take vacation days (we have 21 days of vacations per year),
| and even when you do take vacations you are expected to be
| available if needed._
|
| You were describing US work culture perfectly until the 21
| days of vacation part. In the US you are legally entitled to
| 0 vacation days (also, 0 days for maternity leave), though 10
| is more standard. Our minimum wage is about the same ($7.25),
| and has not changed since 2009 ($7.25 today is equivalent to
| ~$5.50 in 2009).
| 13415 wrote:
| As a foreigner living and working as a long-term resident in
| Portugal (with a Portuguese salary and paying Portuguese taxes,
| of course), my impression is that the problems are systemic and
| long-term. There is no overnight solution but things are slowly
| improving. Salaries are still abysmal so many highly skilled
| workers migrate outside of Portugal. At the same time there is
| a ton of favoritism which leads to an abundant amount of
| incompetence in leadership positions, resulting in low
| motivation. People tend to work a lot, often they are forced to
| work longer than official work hours and there are long lunch
| breaks, but they do not always work very efficiently. My
| impression is that client-related businesses and the public
| sector (funcionarios) are overstaffed. This is especially
| noticeable in shops, where there are often 3 or 4 people
| standing around with nothing to do until one of them draws some
| invisible short straw and takes care of you.
|
| I don't think there is an easy recipe to change systemic
| problems and I don't have any quirks with the current
| government. They're doing a fine job. Portugal used to be a
| rural society and have textile industry. I doubt it's going to
| turn into a high tech innovation hub anytime soon, but everyone
| is trying. The currently biggest problem are the increasing
| rents and stagnating salaries, as well as the brain drain
| mentioned above. But perhaps the biggest problem is favoritism
| and very pronounced social hierarchies, I've heard horror
| stories about psychopathic bosses. I've even met such people at
| university so I believe they have a grain of truth in them.
| jrib wrote:
| I'm curious: if your don't mind sharing, what attracted you
| to living in Portugal as a foreigner?
| EL_Loco wrote:
| Sorry to ask, and you don't have to answer if you don't want
| to, but do you live there by yourself or do you have a
| family? I have a wife and two kids, and I'm trying to figure
| out how much does it cost to live in Portugal, per month. I'm
| planning to move there, not now but in the short future.
| Could you give me an idea of the cost, if you're familiar
| with this situation (family of four). Thanks in advance.
| andrepd wrote:
| Depends on the kind of lifestyle that you want, but two
| 2000EUR salaries (before tax) can support a very
| comfortable upper-middle class life.
| odshoifsdhfs wrote:
| I'm portuguese, happy to help you there if you give more
| details. Where will you be living? Rent can range from
| 500/600 euros in the Porto Periphery to 1500+ in Center.
| Will kids go to private school (200/300 per month is
| common, but 'better' schools can go up to 800/1000 per
| month for the likes ofUBS, CLIP in Porto) or public school
| (free).
|
| If you don't want to live a lavish lifestyle, I think
| 2000/2500 after taxes should be more than enough. Average
| Household income is around 1600 Euros (which is quite low
| tbh) but livable.
| arijo2 wrote:
| "I doubt it's going to turn into a high tech innovation hub
| anytime soon .."
|
| I wouldn't be so sure:
|
| _Remote raises $150m and becomes Portugal's fifth unicorn_ -
| https://sifted.eu/articles/remote-unicorn/
| pokstad wrote:
| I spent years making careful decisions and investments in my
| career so that I could work a flexible and remote job. I've
| worked in places where most of the workers are incapable of
| competently working asynchronously and being results driven.
| Laws like this seem to ridiculous and ignoring the reality of
| work.
| andrepd wrote:
| There is not problem with the "culture of work" if by that
| you're implying people there are lazy and don't work as hard as
| in richer countries. The fact is that "hard work" or
| productivity is entirely uncorrelated with compensation. Simply
| the compensation of labour in a market is the equilibrium
| value, which because of the power imbalance between worker and
| owner means the least value the owner can get away with paying
| (or minimum wage), and in Portugal owners can get away with
| paying less than in Germany, and in Serbia less than Portugal,
| and in Bangladesh less than Serbia. Nothing to do with
| intrinsic work culture.
|
| EDIT: Also the Euro is a disaster for countries like Portugal.
| To be clear: joining the EU was excellent (Portugal is a
| totally different country now than it was before we joined),
| but joining the Euro was disastrous. It bound together
| countries like Portugal and Germany to the same monetary
| policy, even though they had/have completely opposite
| interests. Well guess who had it their way x) Despite this
| massive crippling of sovereignty, which reared its ugly head
| when the time came to handle the European crisis in 2011,
| Portugal reaped no benefit from the monetary union. Closer
| integration or common fiscal policy never happened, and
| Portugal was stuck in a monetary union without a political
| union (the EU is barely a democracy, but that's a whole nother
| can of worms). Germany meanwhile benefits fabulously from its
| position as the foremost surplus country in Europe, in monetary
| union with comparatively weak economies.
| jp57 wrote:
| > but joining the Euro was disastrous. It bound together
| countries like Portugal and Germany to the same monetary
| policy, even though they had/have completely opposite
| interests.
|
| I've often wondered about this. The US Dollar binds together
| poor states Alabama and rich states like California, but I
| don't think I've heard people arguing that two states being
| on a common currency contributes to the impoverishment of
| Alabama.
|
| I'm sure there are important differences between the Euro and
| the Dollar that account for this difference in perspective,
| but I don't know what they are.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| > I don't think I've heard people arguing that two states
| being on a common currency contributes to the
| impoverishment of Alabama.
|
| It's interesting because people don't talk about this more.
| For example a lot of bitterness about the SALT deduction in
| the US essentially boiled down to living in a rich or poor
| state.
|
| Likewise if you look at inflation, it's hitting poorer
| states hardest (probably because they're more dependent on
| energy due to auto-oriented urban planning decisions,
| seasonal climate changes and energy policy). So what do we
| do? Set fiscal policy so Alabama has less inflation or so
| New York reaches full employment?
| InspiredIdiot wrote:
| I assume it comes down to the "monetary union without a
| political union" part. I think you could make some of the
| same arguments for the United States but Alabama and
| California have a stronger political union so there is less
| (but certainly still some) chance for California to exploit
| the relationship by tilting the monitory policy to favor
| itself. Having said that, I don't understand how EU-level
| policy is set. Are EU parliamentarians even directly
| elected?
| andrepd wrote:
| The name European "Parliament" is a bad joke. I'm not
| aware of any other parliament in existence without the
| power to propose laws! The executive AND legislative
| power is in the Commission, which is unelected, unknown
| (for 95% of the public), and mostly unaccountable
| bureaucrats.
|
| Regarding monetary and economic policy, believe it or not
| it gets worse. Much power lies in the "Eurogroup", an
| informal body of finance ministers of member countries
| which meet behind closed doors, as does the council by
| the way. Why do we not require our servants (that's what
| politicians are, supposedly) to have their meetings
| livestreamed for the public again?
| jollybean wrote:
| The US has a single federal fiscal policy and regulatory
| oversight.
|
| The surpluses generally are divided and Alabama etc. are
| subsidized directly, or with things like military bases.
|
| Most US states are too small to have their own currency.
|
| US Monetary Policy also not in the pocket of Cali or NY
| i.e. the important players, like Euro is in the pocket of
| Germans.
|
| This is essentially because in order for a currency union
| to work with different countries, you need a 'hard
| currency' - not a lot of funny money being printed. Germans
| are 'extremely scared' of France/Italy/Spain pumping the
| printing press and filling their economies full of dollars.
| So the Euro is a fairly hard currency, and when they do
| more speculative things, Germany has to be ok with it.
|
| The US Fed has been printing a lot of stimulus, which
| ideally should help the places that need it more, a little
| more, but in practice that might not be true.
|
| I would argue in the age of digitization, it might be
| possible for European countries to go back to sovereign
| currencies and facilitate efficient transfer through
| exchanges with 0 fees, that kind of stuff.
|
| Sweden and Denmark (Finland/UK/Switzerland) have their own
| currencies and they do just fine. You could still have the
| Euro for business transactions.
|
| Nations that have gone bankrupt generally do so because
| they have to issue debt in a currency they don't control.
| Portugal does not really control the Euro, which means if
| there's a crisis, they have to beg France/Germany to help
| or change Euro policies. Not good.
| [deleted]
| andrepd wrote:
| Precisely! California and Alabama are in a monetary and
| customs union AND in a fiscal a political union! That's why
| it works. Federal money flow is net positive into Alabama
| and net negative out of California, _as it 's only natural
| between regions of a country_. There's no tax havens inside
| the US for states to steal tax revenue from one another.
| There's a congress and a president, elected by all (the
| European Parliament is a bad joke). The US Treasury emits
| bonds in the name of the entire country. Can you imagine if
| each state had to emit it's own bonds, lol! Imagine each
| state being on its own, and Alabama trying to get finance
| by selling Alabama t-bills on Alabama credit? But despite
| this using the same currency and having a single market.
| That's more or less Europe right now.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > There's no tax havens inside the US for states to steal
| tax revenue from one another
|
| Yes there are; heck there are even tax havens within
| states for _localities_ to compete that way.
| kova12 wrote:
| > Can you imagine if each state had to emit it's own
| bonds, lol
|
| states actually do emit bonds, as do counties and even
| cities
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >Imagine each state being on its own, and Alabama trying
| to get finance by selling Alabama t-bills on Alabama
| credit?
|
| One could argue that this would create a significant
| incentive for Alabama to improve its structural deficits
| and be more attractive to investors rather than being one
| of the largest federal government recipients among the
| American states.
|
| In fact I think if one looks at Europe overall this is
| largely what has happened. Being in one monetary union
| has driven a lot of countries, in particular in Eastern
| Europe and the Baltics, to clean up their structural
| deficits. A lot of EE countries have gone from being much
| poorer to be on par or already richer than SE. I have
| trouble with this Euro-critical narrative, when a country
| like Estonia, coming out of the Soviet Union
| impoverished, is now more prosperous than Portugal.
|
| Some of the more well governed and prosperous Latin
| American countries have pegged their currency to the US
| dollar voluntarily in the past.
| jollybean wrote:
| "The fact is that "hard work" or productivity is entirely
| uncorrelated with compensation."
|
| They are just not strongly.
|
| All you have to do is send your higher earning potential
| workers to Germany - which as you hint at, kind of the way
| the EU was designed, and which is happening to a great
| degree.
|
| 'Joining the EU' was never a benefit for Portugual - really
| just the free money or subsidized/reasonably structured loans
| and investment were. But as you indicate, the price is a lot
| more.
|
| Germany is where people work, Spain/Portugual is where they
| retire, like the Florida of Europe.
|
| Sadly, I don't see an end as there will never be enough
| momentum to disrupt things, given that young people think
| that 'travelling without a passport' is somehow a giant
| strategic benefit, and they've been told how to think about
| the EU.
|
| You could have a referendum and leaders could ignore it, as
| they have in France, Netherlands, Ireland etc..
|
| There's no change possible on the Horizon, but if there were
| serious economic upheaval in major states like Italy/Spain,
| integration problems wit E. Europe in a major way, it might
| be possible to cut a new deal which would include terms that
| limit ECJ Supremacy and affirmed local constitutions, and
| gave local nations control over settlement, and hopefully
| 'more democracy' at the Legislative and Executive (this will
| never happen though) ... and you have a situation where UK,
| Norway and Switzerland could feasibly join.
| baby wrote:
| One question is: can your people be happy if you don't have the
| best economy? Do you need to constantly grow and produce more
| value to be sustainable?
| arijo wrote:
| The main reason Portugal does not have a competitive per capita
| GDP in the euro area is the fact that the older generations
| have, on average, very low instruction and education levels and
| thus are not able to be as productive as their northern
| European same generation citizens.
|
| There has been a big change in the last 20 years because of a
| big bet on higher education, science and technology. The new
| generations can compete with and match the productivity levels
| of any European citizen of the same age cohort.
|
| I hope this helps you better understand Portuguese economics
| because its impact on Portugal's general wealth will become
| evident to anyone in the following decades.
| adventured wrote:
| Wouldn't Portugal's GDP per capita have been increasing
| noticeably over the last few decades if for 20 years an
| influx of improvement had been occurring with new entrants to
| the labor force?
|
| Inflation adjusted Portugal's GDP per capita has hardly moved
| in three decades.
|
| In nominal terms it hasn't increased in 13 years, since the
| peak before the great recession (23% inflation adjusted
| decline over that time).
|
| By comparison Czechia was far worse off than Portugal 30
| years ago and now has a higher per capita figure. Slovakia is
| likely to similarly overtake Portugal soon as well. The same
| is true of the Baltic states, all of which will overtake
| Portugal (Estonia already has). That doesn't seem like
| something that should be happening if Portugal were seeing a
| big positive change for decades.
| arijo3 wrote:
| As I started by saying:
|
| "The main reason Portugal does not have a competitive per
| capita GDP in the euro area .."
|
| The huge investment that has been made in higher education,
| science and technology took a whole generation for this
| effort to start displaying its results.
|
| The number of STEM PHDs for example, is today orders of
| magnitude higher than it was 20 years ago - things like
| this do take time and do not reflect on GDP data
| immediately.
|
| And yes we're starting to see its effects, though not at
| the level that I expect will be obvious to everyone who
| still thinks of Portuguese people through the prejudice
| resulting for many years of low productivity caused by high
| levels of illiteracy.
|
| Things are changing, see the example below:
|
| _Remote raises $150m and becomes Portugal's fifth unicorn_
| - https://sifted.eu/articles/remote-unicorn/
|
| Actually, I have a friend from Slovakia, and what he tells
| me is exactly the opposite you have commented above - that
| the education system in Slovakia is today much worth than
| it was 10 years ago.
|
| Anyways, I'm seeing a lot of IT companies (local and
| foreign) being created and investing in Portugal and I
| invite you to come here to see for yourself how a big bet
| in education can have huge payoffs on the economical
| development of a country.
| rbobby wrote:
| There should be an SMS option on phones that does an automatic
| reply "Your message to rbobby could not be delivered because
| rbobby is not working right now. If you'd like your message
| delivered anyway a charge of $9.95 will apply. Reply to send your
| message and be charged $9.95"
| [deleted]
| cactus2093 wrote:
| This sounds like a really wild solution without a problem.
|
| The employee can just turn off their phone today, or put it on
| do not disturb, or simply ignore the texts when not working.
| The boss could say "you need to reply to these texts or you
| will be fired", just like they could say "You need to take me
| off your $9.95 delivery list or you will be fired".
|
| Also, is the point here that the employee will be happy to work
| outside of working hours if they are paid $9.95? If they get
| overtime they should be paid it based on the hourly overtime
| rate & policies for their role, not some strange one-time fee
| that their cellular provider collects for them.
| hasmolo wrote:
| there are people who aren't capable of this due to neuro-
| divergence. folks with ADD and ADHD affected by RSD wouldn't
| be able to do what you're asking, and thus these laws are
| intended to help those who cannot help themselves, not the
| people not currently being affected.
| titanomachy wrote:
| RSD = Rejection-sensitive dysphoria, right? How does that
| factor in?
| [deleted]
| ivanmontillam wrote:
| It doesn't need to be an option. You could make an application
| that replaces your native SMS app, and build such a "gateway".
|
| The only problem I see, is that your boss is likely to use
| WhatsApp or else to find you, where such rules can't be
| enforced.
|
| I could make an specific app go offline thanks to the NetGuard
| app (I'm not affiliated with it), it partially solves that
| problem. It must be manually turned on or off.
| belval wrote:
| Reading comment like yours always put into perspective how
| lucky I've been in my career so far to never get a manager
| who would try to find me on WhatsApp to ask work questions.
| It seems like such an overreach and might explain why such a
| law was needed in the first place.
| ivanmontillam wrote:
| For the company where I used to work, some Leaders and
| Senior Leaders even have WhatsApp Groups with their ICs.
|
| I personally think that's too much overreach as well. These
| groups tend to rot into culture echo chambers where you
| feel peer pressured to participate in a forced cheery way.
| evancoop wrote:
| The best counterargument here is that currently, the market
| adjudicates this already. Roles demanding after-hours access
| typically yield higher compensation than similar roles that do
| not. The market essentially offers an employee the opportunity to
| offer an employer greater availability in exchange for pay. If
| the employer demands that access without the corresponding
| compensation, the employee is likely to depart. This law posits a
| market failure. Does one exist?
| pc86 wrote:
| I agree with you 90% of the way, and it would be 100% if not
| for the fact that there are plenty of jobs which _only_ exist
| with constant contact from your boss. There may be folks
| willing to do those jobs for lower compensation, but they don
| 't have the opportunity.
|
| Also, I take issue generally with the idea that in order to
| only work reasonable hours without being bothered by your boss
| you need to get paid less for the work you already do.
| confidantlake wrote:
| You could make that same argument for health and safety
| regulations. Why have them? The market will compensate the
| least safe places higher. But still I would rather know my
| workplace has some sort of minimum safety standard rather than
| try to guess and find the one least likely to get me
| injured/killed.
|
| There are at least 2 market failures I see. One is perfect
| information. The average worker will not know enough about how
| after hours access request system is implemented before
| starting. The other is perfect competition. In an ideal market
| there would be more competition that would give the worker
| enough choice to work without this after hours request demand.
| But in the real world the employee often does not have this
| choice.
| mlboss wrote:
| Does it involves pages also ? What about pages for
| docters/emergency workers ?
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| And I live in a country where government recently legalised 12
| hour shifts.
|
| And EU and American companies open their offices here expecting
| "full cooperation" from these offshore employees while not at all
| from their local employees.
| secondaryacct wrote:
| How do you have time talking here ? Obviously we haven't made
| it clear enough that when you re on your shift you should focus
| on work, and when not, sleep.
| caymanjim wrote:
| It's not at all unusual to work 12-hour shifts at a US company.
| It's less common among white-collar professionals, although
| many in finance, law, and medicine regularly work those kinds
| of hours. It's far more common in blue-collar work--anything
| from retail to trucking to food service to agriculture.
|
| I'm not saying working 12 hour shifts is good or healthy
| (although in some cases it's also not too bad, especially if it
| means more flexibility for the employee, or if they want the
| extra pay). Just pointing out that plenty of US companies do in
| fact expect 12 hour shifts from their local employees.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Alas, Portugal, we hardly knew ye.
|
| No sane business will grow in a country with insane lawmakers.
| anm89 wrote:
| I still don't understand how you guarantee people the right to
| work remotely for
|
| -doctors
|
| -nurses
|
| -trades
|
| -technicians
|
| -factory
|
| -warehouse
|
| -restaurant
|
| -retail
|
| -Hospitality
|
| -janitorial
|
| It seems that more than half of all jobs cannot be done remote
| under any circumstance so how are you going to make that a
| government guaranteed right?
| anm89 wrote:
| Downvotes but nobody actually explaining it.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| You're getting downvoted because you're being deliberately
| obtuse.
|
| No government is trying to guarantee the right for janitors or
| nurses to work remotely - only those jobs for which it's
| feasible.
| mgarfias wrote:
| Omg it's my dream
| syntaxstic wrote:
| This didn't get passed into legislation.
| mjamil wrote:
| I DM my staff on slack "after hours" [1] all the time, and set
| the expectation that they should respond when appropriate at
| their discretion. That could (and often does) mean the next
| business day or even later. Or it could mean ASAP; they're
| adults, and have the judgement to make the correct call.
|
| [1] Obviously, this policy is not targeted at staff in different
| time zones, which makes their remedy meaningless.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| I generally shift over to email, because the expectations
| around email are quite different. In the past I've made it
| explicit what my expectations are for response time based on
| communication method, this has worked for cross-cultural work
| where unspoken assumptions are probably not shared.
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| > Or it could mean ASAP
|
| Why?
|
| This basically means they must "read" the message ASAP to
| decide whether to reply ASAP or not.
|
| That OUGHT NOT TO BE the expectation ever!
|
| Let alone the expectation of an immediate answer, the root
| problem is expectation of that message "being read right then"
| or soon.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| [Sentence removed due to misinterpreting comment I replied to].
| It's important to consider the managers and poor leaders out
| there who might not be as upstanding as yourself with regards
| to expectations, necessitating legislation or regulation.
| Citizens are entitled to their uncompensated time off hours not
| being interrupted.
|
| It's likely the end result of this is using communications tool
| features to queue or hold messages until a worker's work day
| starts. I believe Slack, Teams, and Office 365 already support
| "quiet hours" at org level.
|
| Tangentially, when thinking about labor regulation, I think
| it's important to frame the conversations as "what monsters
| lurk in the private sector? [1] [2]" vs "I am a great boss, why
| would this be necessary?"
|
| [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=ceo+type+psychopath
|
| [2] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=leadership+dark+triad
| bpodgursky wrote:
| I have an 11 month old child. My work hours are all over the
| place. A law telling me I can't catch up on Slack when I'm up
| at midnight for unrelated reasons just makes my life worse.
|
| Why not just close slack when you leave for the day? I don't
| get it.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| > Why not just close slack when you leave for the day? I
| don't get it.
|
| Because there are bosses out there who, if you don't meet
| their expectation of round the clock access to you, will
| fire you or PIP you out. Regulation will always have some
| edge cases where said regulation is suboptimal, but optimal
| over the aggregate. Your life might be worse, but more
| people's lives are improved.
|
| Having children myself, I understand and can relate to your
| situation, but also understand the value of setting
| employment boundaries using regulation. Constant off hours
| contact is legitimately harmful to worker wellbeing [1].
|
| "The insidious impact of 'always on' organizational culture
| is often unaccounted for or disguised as a benefit -
| increased convenience, for example, or higher autonomy and
| control over work-life boundaries," says Becker. "Our
| research exposes the reality: 'flexible work boundaries'
| often turn into 'work without boundaries,' compromising an
| employee's and their family's health and well-being.
|
| Becker's research [2] is part of a growing body of work
| that is affirming the negative effects of an "always on"
| work culture. Around the world, several governments have
| begun to go as far as legislate laws allowing employees the
| freedom to not have to engage with work outside of official
| work hours."
|
| [1] https://newatlas.com/right-to-disconnect-after-hours-
| work-em... (The right to disconnect: The new laws banning
| after-hours work emails)
|
| [2] https://journals.aom.org/doi/10.5465/AMBPP.2018.121
| (Killing me softly: Electronic communications monitoring
| and employee and spouse well-being)
| jjk166 wrote:
| This is an example of regulating a poorly chosen proxy.
| If the issue is people getting fired for ignoring a
| message, make firing people for not being available 24/7
| illegal. There are plenty of reasons why after hours
| messages might be useful and no one really has a problem
| with them on their own, it's other behaviors which are
| loosely correlated with it which are the issue. Yes you
| will always have edge cases, but we should strive to
| minimize those edge cases as much as possible. In the
| particular situation of "some people prefer work
| schedules outside the standard 9-5" it's not even a small
| edge case, nor an unintuitive one.
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| Some people would also prefer to drive on the other side
| of the road for their own legitimate concerns.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Driving on the wrong side of the road directly causes
| collisions. Would you rather A) ban driving on the wrong
| side of the road and thus stop unwanted behaviour or B)
| leave driving on the wrong side of the road legal but ban
| british people from driving because british drivers are
| correlated with driving on the other side of the road?
|
| Option A is a well chosen proxy, option B is the poorly
| chosen proxy I am arguing against.
| gjulianm wrote:
| > If the issue is people getting fired for ignoring a
| message, make firing people for not being available 24/7
| illegal.
|
| It's much more difficult to prove that a worker is being
| fired for not being available 24/7 when they company says
| they have other reasons, than to prove that your boss
| sent a message out of hours. Your proposal would be
| practically unenforceable.
| jjk166 wrote:
| It doesn't matter how easily something is measured if
| it's not a useful measure.
|
| The difficulty of enforcing wrongful termination laws in
| a "right to work" environment is a separate issue, solved
| by better standards of evidence with clear guidelines.
| gjulianm wrote:
| No standard of evidence will solve the fact that you
| can't ever know the true motives of someone. If someone
| gets fired because their boss says it was for poor
| performance, you won't ever know that the thing that the
| boss cared for was the fact that the employee didn't
| respond to some slack messages. Find just enough evidence
| for plausible deniability and you're done. Also, the
| difficulty of proving the causes of termination will mean
| that employees will be discouraged to sue.
|
| On the other hand, if you ban out-of-hours messages, it's
| pretty easy to prove you received that message, so it's
| much easier to enforce.
|
| This happens with a lot of similar issues. For example,
| in my country it's illegal to ask in interviews about
| family situation, pregnancy, religion... The point is to
| stop hiring discrimination, but it's much easier to prove
| that the employer asked me about whether I wanted to have
| kids than to prove that the employer rejected me because
| I want to have kids.
| jjk166 wrote:
| You don't need to know the true motives of someone, you
| just need to evaluate the likely motives of someone. If a
| boss says the employee performed poorly, let them show
| the performance metric by which they determined that poor
| performance. If it's "monthly sales numbers" and the
| employee is substantially below average, that seems
| reasonable. If its "average message response time" then
| it's an open and shut case. If the employer just says
| some vague "they weren't doing a good job" but can
| present no evidence in support of that statement while
| the employee can show evidence of the boss expecting 24/7
| communication, a reasonable person ought to conclude that
| was a major factor in the decision. The issue is that,
| because of poor standards of evidence and guidelines,
| employers are often given an immense benefit of the doubt
| and employees are hamstrung by dumb rules, allowing
| courts to do mental gymnastics to say that the employer
| who fired their best salesperson after they whistleblew
| because they wore an ugly tie on a tuesday and for no
| other reason. Yeah, you can avoid that issue in certain
| cases with a proxy, but sooner or later you just need to
| fix it.
|
| If your goal was simply to make the most easily
| enforceable law, why go through all the trouble of
| getting records of after hours messages? Why not just ban
| the use of instant messaging altogether. Or work email.
| Or employment. You will instantly stop 100% of employee
| abuse. Of course this is a facetious statement, we don't
| want to stop employment, or communication, these things
| are useful and desirable. We want to do minimal harm
| while preventing egregious abuse.
|
| I think the restriction on interview questions is also an
| example of a poorly chosen proxy, but at least in that
| case there is no legitimate reason to ask those questions
| - you shouldn't be making hiring decisions off those
| criteria, there should be no need for that information
| during the hiring process. But if you come into the
| interview and are visibly pregnant, that protection
| doesn't do shit for you, because the issue isn't them
| asking questions. If you have a system in place good
| enough to prevent a visibly pregnant woman from being
| discriminated against, you don't need to prevent
| questions about pregnancy.
| 6510 wrote:
| You are not fired for that, you are fired for responding
| slower than the other candidate. Employers have to chose
| all the time. Who to promote? Who gets the shit task? Who
| will fly to the tropical resort?
|
| You end up with millions of individual struggles with
| boundaries set by need/urgency, ability to say no, how
| much of a dick the boss is etc etc
|
| In NL we have some law for a sector where people need to
| sleep on their shift while still on call. They get some
| small hourly compensation for those hours. When called
| their normal shift starts which has a minimum duration.
| After working for the maximum number of hours per
| day/week someone else will have to take over. Perhaps an
| exception like that could work.
|
| Something like 25% of the normal hourly rate for being
| available. (for example 4 hours after each shift (20h)
| and 12 hours in the weekend (24h) for 12 hours extra pay)
| When called it is considered a minimum duration shift of
| 3 hours, hours beyond 8 or after 18:00 at overtime rate.
| The 3 hours are removed starting with the last work day
| of the week and the first of the next.
| jjk166 wrote:
| This is not a situation unique to after hours messages.
| The workplace is full of instances where an employer can
| discriminate against an employee in small but meaningful
| ways, you need robust employee protections, not a series
| of questionable legal hacks.
|
| Replace responding slower with say being a different skin
| color. If a white and a black employee are equal on
| meaningful metrics but one gets to go on all the fun
| trips while the other is consistently given the shit
| tasks, that's obviously a problem, but you can't simply
| avoid the situation where the problem might present
| itself. You need structures in place so that employees
| can identify that they're being mistreated, notify
| someone with the power to fix the situation, confirm that
| the problem has actually been solved, and escalate if
| not; all without fear of retaliation. That is tough to
| do, but it doesn't make it any less necessary. Once you
| have that system in place, it is the logical way to deal
| with all forms of mistreatment. Then there is no need for
| special exceptions which substitute one rigid restriction
| for another.
| hxbdidk wrote:
| He says that he expects people to respond to DMs ASAP when he
| considers it appropriate. That means his staff have to read
| each message he sends them when he sends them. This is hardly
| good leadership.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| They said they set appropriate expectations, and I'm
| supposed to be polite and assume positive intent of other
| comments per HN guidelines.
|
| I believe my comments make it clear where I stand on
| support of regulation to prohibit this activity.
| handrous wrote:
| > That could (and often does) mean the next business day
| or even later. Or it could mean ASAP; they're adults, and
| have the judgement to make the correct call.
|
| GP was correct--that means you've gotta read every
| message in case it's one of the "ASAP" ones. That's just
| _exactly_ what the post under discussion _explicitly
| stated_. No adversarial reading required.
|
| Assuming positive intent, in this case, would be to
| assume that they've at least made it clear what counts as
| "ASAP" so workers don't have to guess, after checking the
| message. If not, it's even worse.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| It's great that you don't have the _expectation_ of people
| reading or replying to your messages after hours.
|
| However, please recognize that even with a well-meaning boss
| like you, there are still mechanisms that incentivize
| individuals to at least read these messages, and once their
| free time has been "tainted" with work stuff, much of the
| damage is already done. Psychological pressures (which may be
| entirely internal but often are the result of other peers'
| attitudes as well) will still take a toll.
|
| IMHO, as grown-ups, it is the most reasonable thing to avoid
| such leakage altogether; when my phone rings after hours I need
| to be _certain_ that this is not something that can wait.
|
| Luckily, since you're already using slack, you can just use the
| "send later" feature which is super simple to use and will work
| around this effectively. :)
| pandemicsoul wrote:
| I agree. Even if I don't receive a notification, if I happen
| to open the Slack app and see pending messages - particularly
| if they're from a manager or someone higher in the hierarchy
| - then I feel obligated to respond to them.
| danny_taco wrote:
| Well then, it sounds like you need to put your phone down
| or at least don't open Slack, knowing well what would
| happen if you do. The onus is on you to disconnect from
| work, not to ensure everyone else conforms to your
| schedule.
| belval wrote:
| I disagree with your take and I am mostly on the receiving
| end of those late Slack messages. If you do not wish to get
| notified unless it's an emergency there is a nifty feature
| that allows you to define your working hours, out of which
| you won't get a notification when getting messages on Slack.
|
| In case of something that is urgent the sender can override
| the "do not disturb" and send a notification anyway. This in
| my opinion is the right way to do.
|
| You should own the fact that your free time is yours and that
| you shouldn't open Slack to read those late messages. People
| work at different times (especially true for globally
| distributed team) and expecting people to "know" that they
| are outside of YOUR business hours simply does not scale to
| multiple employees.
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| Instant messaging should be used for instant messaging.
| There's a reason we have email and now tickets as well.
| Normal_gaussian wrote:
| And his cries of "stop that, no, you're doing it wrong!"
| fell on deaf ears, for use is born not from design but
| usefulness.
| _jal wrote:
| > You should own the fact that your free time is yours and
| that you shouldn't open Slack to read those late messages
|
| It sounds like that works for you at your company.
| Congrats!
|
| But if you're lucky enough never to have had an overbearing
| boss, you're not familiar with all the nifty ways they will
| try to control or coerce labor while not paying you.
|
| In US low-wage jobs, they know they can get away with
| violating labor law with impunity until it gets bad enough
| to attract media attention. Even if workers had the money
| to sue, it wouldn't be worth it.
|
| I got to see texts from a younger relative's boss at a
| national chain restaurant leading up to quitting. She had
| been working 6-7 days a week for over a month, but wage
| theft was keeping her under 40 hours a week paid. Multiple
| demands she come in on her day off with less than a couple
| hours notice to "support the team" or "do her part", with
| escalating threats in response to anything less deferential
| than "yes boss".
|
| She finally responded by quitting. That solicited a
| remarkable fit of rage, calling her a loser who can't hold
| down a real job and so on.
|
| The thing that kills me is I know most people don't want to
| be abusive shitheads. It is absolutely learned behavior
| from an abusive top-down system. The only way to win is not
| to play.
|
| And I think that's driving a lot of the job churn our
| sanctified "job creators" are bitching about. Fuck 'em. If
| you can't build a company without abusing people, you don't
| deserve a company. Go get a real job, whiners.
| belval wrote:
| > She had been working 6-7 days a week for over a month,
| but wage theft was keeping her under 40 hours a week
| paid.
|
| There are already laws against wage theft, if her current
| employer is already ignoring the existing laws, what
| exactly will improve with an additional one? Bad work
| environment won't be improved by a ham-fisted legislation
| around when your employer is allowed to talk with you.
|
| This kind of good intention laws can only be used by
| employees that already have some leverage and are in a
| decent work environment. Say the no-text-after-5 law is
| implemented in the US, what exactly do you think will
| happen when your relative quotes it to her employer? In
| an at-will state she'll get fired, in a not-at-will state
| she will get fired for a bogus reason.
|
| Powerless people don't magically gain power with shitty
| edge-case laws like this. Create a social net that allows
| her to quit without dying of starvation one month later
| or going bankrupt from lack of insurance. That will give
| the poorest among us some actual leverage.
| andrepd wrote:
| >Create a social net that allows her to quit without
| dying of starvation one month later or going bankrupt
| from lack of insurance.
|
| That's a very good point! And true. But it's not a xor
| situation, you can have both as they handle different
| things. Regardless of any social security net, you can
| still be bullied or manipulated into yielding your free
| time. It's good to have it written into law that it's
| against the law to contact a worker outside their
| contracted hours.
| sophacles wrote:
| But all the users above me said the market takes care of
| it... im confused. It sounds to me like you're saying
| that labor laws exist as a response to widespread bad
| behavior rather than dirty liberals trying to make it
| possible for plebs to have control over their own lives?
| ativzzz wrote:
| The right way to do it is to not install work slack on any
| of your non-work devices. Barring emergencies, which should
| be directed to dedicated on-call staff, or extenuating
| circumstances like prearranged projects with tight
| deadlines, there should be no reason to have to reply to
| your boss until the next work day.
| andrepd wrote:
| Or if there is, write that into the contract and pay
| accordingly.
| monster_group wrote:
| I turn off my work computer after work day. I never install
| company chat apps / email on personal devices. So it really
| doesn't matter whether my manager messages me after hours or
| next business day because I'll only see when I login to work
| computer next morning.
| confidantlake wrote:
| That sounds terrible. Your staff has to read every message
| after hours in case they get one where they have to respond
| ASAP. Now I can see why Portugal deemed the law necessary.
| McDyver wrote:
| As someone mention in another comment, sending an email would
| be more adequate. The reason being that even if people are
| "adults, and have the judgement to make the correct call",
| there is always a looming implied pressure in sending an
| instant message. Not everyone will have the mental fortitude to
| just leave things for later, when the boss sends a message.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| > Or it could mean ASAP
|
| Reading this as written, you're requiring your staff to read
| every message immediately but they only need to respond if you
| think they need to.
|
| That's no different than 24/7 on call when it comes to making
| some people's lives miserable.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| Yup slack is async communication. I always reply to my bosses
| 24 hours after they send me a message. To make sure that there
| is no expectation that I will be responding immediately.
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| We have a team distributed over many time zones so we have to
| send messages to each other at "off hours". Thankfully we have
| a good understanding that this is for the convenience of the
| sender and the receiver can reply the following day.
|
| I have one team member in Quebec and the way they handle this
| seems to make more sense than Portugal's. Basically, the
| employees have the right to refuse 'overtime'. So, the boss can
| message them, but they cannot be penalized for not responding.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| This is our policy as well and it works perfectly. In a world
| where working in different time zones is increasingly becoming
| the norm, there's really no other workable policy unless you
| want to hamstring team members outside of your company's
| "official" time zone.
|
| That said, I'm sure some bosses have abused this policy despite
| its well-meaning origins.
| hxbdidk wrote:
| Or in other words "I expect my staff to always check every DM I
| send them out of hours and correctly deduce whether I expect
| them to respond immediately. If they don't I will consider them
| to have poor judgement."
| david422 wrote:
| > they're adults
|
| But adults who's source of income is their job that you hold
| the power over.
|
| Even if everybody has a great relationship, that power
| differential is real and present and can't be changed.
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