California Introduces 'Right To Disconnect' Bill That Would Allow Employees To P...
source link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/04/02/1847209/california-introduces-right-to-disconnect-bill-that-would-allow-employees-to-possibly-relax
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California Introduces 'Right To Disconnect' Bill That Would Allow Employees To Possibly Relax
An anonymous reader shares a report: Burnout, quiet quitting, strikes -- the news (and likely your schedule) is filled with markers that workers are overwhelmed and too much is expected of them. There's little regulation in the United States to prevent employers from forcing workers to be at their desks or on call at all hours, but that might soon change. California State Assemblyman Matt Haney has introduced AB 2751, a "right to disconnect" proposition, The San Francisco Standard reports. The bill is in its early stages but, if passed, would make every California employer lay out exactly what a person's hours are and ensure they aren't required to respond to work-related communications while off the clock. Time periods in which a salaried employee might have to work longer hours would need to be laid out in their contract. Exceptions would exist for emergencies. The Department of Labor would monitor adherence and fine companies a minimum of $100 for wrongdoing -- whether that's forcing employees to be on Zoom, their inbox, answering texts or monitoring Slack when they're not getting paid to do so. "I do think it's fitting that California, which has created many of these technologies, is also the state that introduces how we make it sustainable and update our protections for the times we live in and the world we've created," Haney told The Standard.
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I'm not against this, but the folks I work with where this is already the law, e.g., France, basically carry 2 smart phones with them - one for work use, and one for home. At 17:00, the work phone gets turned off until the next work day. The company (with a large IT team) could not configure current smart phones to split work accounts/apps off from personal ones and be compliant with the law, i.e., never alert for work items after hours, so this was what they ended up with.
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Having to carry two devices is a sub-optimal solution, though.
Phones already have the concept of "do not disturb", and times when that is automatically active. They just need to extend that to each app (opt-in).
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However, separating your work from your personal onto two separate devices is very good for security and for privacy. IMO, it's worth it.
I'm retired now, but when I was working I had a simple fix for not mixing work and personal stuff on my phone: I didn't give my employer my cell phone number (I had a landline... they got that) and I didn't set up any work-related stuff on my phone.
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You don't need two devices for that. Several modern smartphones have the two compartmentalised to the point where you either can't at all traverse between work / personal profiles, or need to jump through serious hoops to do so.
I only have one phone, a work provided one. The risk to my personal profile is that work can remotely lock / disable the phone. That's it. They can't even run the find my phone function. When they push an SSL cert it only applies to the instance of the apps run under the work profile
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maybe for you - ive been carrying 2 phones for years and have absolutely zero issues with it.
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My work phone had the ability to be remotely wiped by corporate. Would you like that feature on your personal phone?
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iPhones have work and personal containers. You can set up your email to be wiped while the rest of your phone remains intact.
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As do Android phones, you can have multiple users setup and switch between them.
Aaron Z
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Having to carry two devices is a sub-optimal solution, though.
As the other poster suggested, there is a security reason for doing so. In our case, if there is a Right to Know request and you are using your personal machine or personal phone for business activities, that gets confiscated as part of the investigation. When it will get returned is unknown.
Thus, use your company issued phone (and machine) only for business use and your personal phone and machine for personal use. This also keeps you -
Having to carry two devices is a sub-optimal solution, though.
Phones already have the concept of "do not disturb", and times when that is automatically active. They just need to extend that to each app (opt-in).
Android supports this, has for several years.
The way it works is that you have a "personal profile" (basically, the default) and a "work profile". The company can dictate what gets installed in the work profile, can wipe it remotely, etc., and you can pause the work profile, which disables all of the work apps from running, or maybe just from sending notifications, not sure -- but when the work profile is logged out, you don't get any notifications. The company's systems cannot see any apps or activity from the personal profile. You can also control location separately for work and personal profile, so you can keep location services on for personal use, while preventing work apps from getting your location.
I'm not sure if there's a setting to automatically pause and unpause the work profile based on time of day, etc., but it's pretty easy to do it yourself.
The main downside of this scheme is that apps that you need in both work and personal profiles -- say, gmail -- are on your home screen twice, once normal and once with a little orange suitcase icon for the work version.
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This relies on your company's IT department to set it up properly. My company has it sort of half-implemented, and we have a work profile on Android with Microsoft Authenticator installed, but not Outlook or Teams, so you still have to use Outlook and Teams in your personal profile. You get all of the hassle with none of the benefits, I guess.
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That's not a question of properly, that's a question of outright incompetence. Honestly you would actively have to put effort into setting it up that poorly. Proper MDM is trivial to setup.
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There is a setting to schedule when Work Profile apps can notify you and run. It's under Digital Wellbeing in the settings.
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Having to carry two devices is a sub-optimal solution, though.
I disagree. I consider it necessary. I have zero desire or willingness to have my personal phone and everything on it subjected to a legal discovery process, which is unlikely but certainly possible for the work phone.
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If it comes to a legal discovery process, I don't think having two phones is going to save you. If someone is interested in your communications, they'll probably get to seize and examine all of your devices, including phones, laptops and desktops.
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I've been through this process a few times and it is irrelevant. If there is suspicion of outside communication your private phone can be subject to a legal discovery as well. If there's no suspicion then unless your employer is incompetent then your phone won't ever be taken off you in the first place. The whole point about MDM is to control communication channels and data security. In 3 of the times I've had discover / legal hold put on me, the phone was never required. By the fact that only official comm
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I read my employers rules on having work related software (any software, incl. email) on a personal mobile device, and the security policy stated essentially that they would not ever wipe my device (e.g., when lost) without my permission - unless they would decide otherwise. Not kidding! Excellent, you just told me to never let you on my personal devices. And since they won't pay for a work phone, I have no problems. I am pretty much the only one I know who does not have email, Teams etc. on their personal
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Then they're using bad MDM solutions, because that's entirely possible for the last 6+ years with both iOS and Android.
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False.
MDM allows employer to push privacy invasive policies at any time without employee knowledge or consent
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I worked for an MDM company for almost a decade; this is patently false. If your company is doing this, they've gone around the functionality that Apple and Google built into their phones to support BOYD and the separation of work and personal profiles. I know this for a fact, because again, I helped to build and implement this over 5+ years ago.
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oh, MDM doesn't do for example location tracking?
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you're both right though. If you properly configure MDM it allows the end user to completely silence any work related notifications. However as you can see, it is a conditional statement. The MDM solution does have full admin on your device and thus could make any changes to your device, read info , etc. So if you don't work "work stuff" on your phone. MDM is not the solution.
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