Researcher calls for Quebec workers’ right to disconnect as smartphones blur work-life boundaries

A researcher says labour standards need to catch up with technology and protect employees from being constantly connected.

Most people taking vacations these days aren’t truly off from work; with smartphones, emails are just a couple of clicks away.

Some experts say that’s a problem, and Quebec labour standards should be updated to give employees the right to disconnect.

Lawyer and researcher with the Centre for Interuniversity Research on Globalization and Work at the Université de Montréal, Geneviève Richard, says connectivity can be good.

“We can work anywhere, anytime, and our professional environment can contact us; our colleagues, our bosses, our clients can contact us anywhere, anytime.”

But she adds that “hyperconnectivity” can have harmful effects on people who don’t unplug.

“The fact that we are never fully off work. It has been associated in the scientific literature with a very wide array of negative impacts on physical health and psychological health, on the quality and quantity of sleep.”

Richard says several additions to Quebec labour standards have been made since the 1970s, but regulating remote work isn’t one of them.

She is advocating for amendments to the labour code and says both employers and employees have to make accommodations.

“If you know that while all those emails are coming in, all those messages are going unanswered and people are looking for me and people are getting anxious and my inbox is just constantly overflowing.”

Richard says workers’ right to disconnect on days off is long overdue.

Her recommendations are that labour standards must catch up to current technology that allows constant connection.

“To make sure that the law takes that into account because it was written many decades ago when we didn’t have cell phones.”