MAIL ON SUNDAY COMMENT: The ‘right to switch off’ risks switching us off from success
Long ago, work and home were separate worlds. Millions toiled in factories, mines and foundries. Or they trooped into regimented offices, which were equipped – as homes were not – with telephones, typewriters, adding machines and similar equipment.
The working day began and ended with the sound of the hooter and the glum rituals of clocking in and clocking out.
In most trades and professions, being called at home outside working hours could be justified only by some sort of emergency.
It would have been difficult to have any other arrangement. Up into the 1970s, a telephone at home was an expensive privilege for millions, and even science-fiction fantasists had yet to think of texts or emails.
In the same era, millions of women stayed at home as full-time mothers. The home was a completely separate sphere from the workplace.
In most trades and professions, being called at home outside working hours could be justified only by some sort of emergency
There was much to be said for this old system, and it had its advantages for everyone.
But it has gone, and it will not come back. The computer revolution is one of the greatest material changes in the history of the world. Its advantages and its disadvantages cannot now be disinvented. And, at the same time, there has been a strong turn away from the old heavy industries which demanded regimented armies of both manual and white-collar workers to make them function.
Many of us live much further from work than we used to, spending long periods in cars, buses and trains between home and work. We simply are no longer tied to the workbench or under the eye of some supervisor. There are advantages to the new system for employer and employee. In an age when two-income households are the norm, the ability to do some work from home enables parents to be with their children together more than they otherwise would.
Since the Covid crisis, working from home has become far more widespread. The inevitable price for this is that the demands of the office can and do sometimes invade our homes in the evenings and even at weekends.
It is hardly unreasonable for modern employers to expect to be able to contact their workforce at reasonable hours. And in fact it is usually the more senior and more privileged employees who find themselves working at home, as part of a recognised trade-off between promotion and added responsibility.
Labour’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, seems inclined to rush ahead with some such law. She says: ‘Constant emails and calls outside of work should not be the norm.’
READ MORE: Labour to make working from home a ‘human right’ as part of election manifesto as well as new proposal making it easier for workers to strike
Pictured: Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer (File photo)
In the light of all these facts, the Labour Party’s embrace of a so-called ‘right to switch off’ may at first sight be appealing, but it is irresponsible and dangerous to prosperity. The idea of a ‘right to disconnect’ is currently spreading across continental Europe, and the Scottish Government is making a tentative experiment among civil servants. A wise government would let them see how that worked out in practice over the medium term, before instantly aping it.
Labour’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, seems inclined to rush ahead with some such law. She says: ‘Constant emails and calls outside of work should not be the norm.’
Has she or her boss Sir Keir Starmer (who has perhaps been known to contact her outside normal working hours) actually thought very hard about this?
A legal right to cut off phone and email contact means the employee involved has no idea how important the call or message might be.
In global commerce, crises cannot be restricted to the hours of nine to five.
You may be sure that businesses in Asia, our toughest competitors, would never submit to such rules.
What if it led to British firms losing urgent contracts and so having to make staff redundant?
What good is a superb work-life balance, if there is no work?
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