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French companies will be required to guarantee a "right to disconnect" to their employees from Sunday as the country seeks to tackle the modern-day scourge of compulsive out-of-hours email checking. From January 1, a new employment law will enter into force that obliges organisations with more than 50 workers to start negotiations to define the rights of employees to ignore their smartphones.
Overuse of digital devices has been blamed for everything from burnout to sleeplessness as well as relationship problems, with many employees uncertain of when they can switch off. The French measure is intended to tackle the so-called "always-on" work culture that has led to a surge in usually unpaid overtime—while also giving employees flexibility to work from outside the office.
http://phys.org/news/2017-01-french-workers-disconnect.html
[Also Covered By]: The Guardian , Sky News
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday January 03 2017, @01:00PM
Except, of course, that hard work does in fact kill people:
* About 4500 Americans a year are killed on the job [bls.gov]. In less developed countries, that number is much higher.
* Even more end up with diseases they contracted on the job [who.int]. Again, worse in less-developed countries, but we're talking thousands of people a year getting cancer or wrecking their lungs by breathing in pollution.
* Many suicides are related to the stresses of hard work. For example, a disproportionate 400 newer doctors each year off themselves [afsp.org]. This most frequently happens during medical residency, when the newly minted doctor officially has to work 80 hours a week, and unofficially often more than that, for 3-4 years straight.
Also, what they're making illegal is getting people into career trouble over things like failing to answer non-emergency work emails at 2 AM on a Saturday night within 30 minutes or less. And if you think that's a far-fetched scenario, know that I was pushed out of a job in the US with the boss citing precisely that issue, because apparently sleeping wasn't something I was allowed to do if I worked for that company.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.