The Taipei Department of Labor on Friday reminded employers to protect their workers’ “right to disconnect,” adding that companies should pay overtime if they send messages to employees after work.
The department last year was the first in the nation to release a set of guidelines for institutions regarding work-from-home labor conditions, in which it said employers should “respect workers’ right to disconnect.”
The “right to disconnect” is a worker’s right to not engage in work-related activities or communications by means of digital tools, such as e-mails or electronic messaging, during nonwork hours.
Photo: Fang Wei-chieh, Taipei Times
In a news conference on labor culture activities to be introduced in the coming months, Taipei Department of Labor Commissioner Kao Boa-hua (高寶華) was asked to elaborate on workers’ “right to disconnect.”
Kao said that department officials had traveled to Germany to better understand the concept before setting the administrative guidelines, under which employers or supervisors should not give work-related instructions to their employees after work hours.
“Even if they say in the message that it can be dealt with the next morning, it should still be counted as overtime work,” Kao said, adding that even if supervisors claim they did not ask the workers to read the message after work, the reality is that most workers would read it, and they might start thinking about how they should deal with it the next morning.
For example, if a person gets off work at 5pm and receives a message from their boss at 5:01pm assigning them work for the next morning, it should still be considered overtime work, and the worker can use communication logs as evidence to ask for overtime payment, he said.
Taipei Labor Standards Division head Hung San-kai (洪三凱) said that overtime work means asking workers to provide services during non-work hours, so if workers read the boss’ message, dealt with the issue, and replied, then a screenshot of the time they received the message and replied can be used as an attendance record.
However, Kao said the right to disconnect is not yet stipulated in law, so there are no direct corresponding penalties, but fines could be imposed under the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法).
Under the act, employers can be fined for not providing overtime payment, Hung said.
However, he added that there have not been any labor disputes associated with the “right to disconnect” since the guidelines were released in March last year.
“The guidelines serve more as guidance, reminding employers not to disturb employees after work,” he said.
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