Great competition for workers’ rights is holding us back

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Is there no problem, these days, that cannot be solved by the state? When the cry goes up, “Why isn’t anyone doing something about it?”, that someone is almost always the government.

Labor’s plan to give staff a “right to disconnect”, to prevent bosses from contacting them after hours, feels like a classic of the genre. Burnout is real. But one of the reasons that life at home and work have become so blurry is that so many of us have chosen to work from home. I’m not sure how the same politicians who support “flexible working” can simultaneously question our workday. If I pick up my child from school in the afternoon and go back to my desk at night, should I not send any emails? What if I’m communicating with colleagues in another time zone or working on a corporate agreement?

Having some sort of formal permission to go offline feels appealing. Scrolling through emails right before bed can spike your blood pressure. I’ve recently started using the “schedule send” feature so that late-night emails don’t arrive until 9am the next morning. And I’ve noticed that a lot of people now have email footers assuring me that their message isn’t urgent.

But this is proof that organizations are already adjusting. Much has been said that France and Spain have introduced a right to disconnect. But France already has a 35-hour work week, a policy that has had to generate exemptions to accommodate the real world. A general rule of thumb for policy making might be: Don’t pass a law that is broken by both staff and managers because they think it’s nonsense.

Meanwhile, in Spain last year, the offices of PwC, KPMG, EY and Deloitte received surprise visits from government inspectors checking whether staff had put in unrecognized overtime. If this had been Amazon’s warehouses, forcing exhausted workers to stack shelves, this might have made sense. But at the big accounting firms, thousands of applicants fight for jobs, most of whom are fully aware that the trade-off is high wages for long hours. Tight labor markets have already empowered staff: they can quit.

If you work in a box or in a call center, your biggest problem is not that the boss sends you a WhatsApp on your day off. It is inflation, insecurity and the threat of automation. In its New Deal for Working People policy document, Labor promises, if it wins the election, to strengthen workers’ rights by banning zero-hour contracts, raising the minimum wage and making workers eligible for sick pay. and parental leave from day one. All of these changes would make life less precarious for workers in the informal economy. However, it also includes a number of other proposals: extended maternity and paternity leave, the right to bereavement leave, stronger collective bargaining, and giving all workers the right to work flexibly from day one, “to the extent where it is reasonable.”

The document argues that fair and safe work improves productivity, because staff are happier. There is merit in that. But too many new rules will boost the burgeoning legal and compliance industry. When politicians talk about “growth”, I don’t think that’s what they mean.

Conservatives also have a way here. They introduced reports on the gender pay gap, up to 12 weeks paid leave for parents whose babies need neonatal care, and the “right to request” flexible work from day one, instead of 26 weeks on a job. His changes to IR35, which requires employers to determine the tax status of self-employed workers, have left companies needing to seek costly legal advice and forced many contractors to pay employee taxes without receiving any entitlements. In return. Meanwhile, the Carers Leave Bill, introduced by the Liberal Democrats but supported by all major parties, will give more than 2 million people the legal right to take five days of unpaid leave a year.

Who could disagree with helping someone whose new baby needs specialized care, or is juggling work and caring for an elderly relative? Individually, these changes sound unobjectionable. Together they add up. Policymakers say they care about productivity, but never ask about the ratio of compliance officers, labor lawyers, and training managers to staff doing “real” jobs.

After all, some compliance roles are the kind of “shit jobs” identified by anthropologist David Graeber, who showed that meaningless work is almost as bad as having no job at all. Small businesses can’t even afford to hire a compliance officer. He is the business owner, working late into the night to fill out all the extra forms. I’m not sure how that helps balance work and personal life.

Maternity leave, paid vacation, sick pay, equality legislation: these are vital and hard-earned job protections. But the endless trickle of new labor laws from politicians who have rarely dictated anything indicates that employers cannot be trusted. There will always be some who take shortcuts. But most CEOs and managers are going to great lengths to navigate post-pandemic regulations and worry about the mental health of their staff. One told me that creating the right to work from home would disrupt efforts to treat everyone fairly: half their staff have to come in to serve customers. When the world of work is in that transition, it would be wiser to leave those decisions in the hands of employers.

In 2018, a French court ordered Rentokil to pay 60,000 euros to a former employee after ruling that the company had violated his right to disconnect. The man was a director who had been asked to keep his phone on in case of an emergency. When we’re desperate for inward investment, when public finances are a yawning black hole, helping employees disengage feels, dare I say, trivial.

camilla.cavendish@ft.com