

Germany bans managers from calling or emailing staff after work hours - wslh
http://ibnlive.in.com/news/germany-bans-managers-from-calling-or-emailing-staff-after-work-hours/461070-79.html

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Argorak
Misleading title. The german labor ministry, not Germany as a whole, is doing
that. Not even other ministries. They follow several major companies (VW was
one of the first, AFAIK).

~~~
jessriedel
So the labor ministry (basically the department of labor for us Americans) is
a part of the German government with the power to institute nationwide rules
regulating labor, but in this case it's just the ministry that is applying a
rule to itself? Is that right?

~~~
Argorak
This is really just internals for the ministry, in their role as an employer,
yes.

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kale
I understand the reasoning behind it, but is the e-mail part necessary? I
often e-mail people that I know are on vacation for things that aren't time
sensitive, mainly to ensure that I don't forget to notify them of something. I
would hope that they wouldn't check work e-mail, or at least ignore it. I'd
never call them off-hours unless it was an emergency.

E-mail is a type of communication where the receiver can be in control of
receipt and response. Should a manager type up an e-mail (if it's after work
hours), save it, then write a note (or schedule a delayed send) to send it in
the morning? It seems cumbersome and seems like it wouldn't address the core
problem, unlike telephone calls.

~~~
duaneb
I would hope—I dare not say imagine—that the law would simply not require any
response (or even reading it) outside of work hours.

~~~
Argorak
There is now law. These are the house rules of a ministry in its role as an
employer.

~~~
Argorak
Argh, was late yesterday night. "There is no law" would be correct ;).

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pjmlp
This is why I enjoy doing IT and living in Germany.

At my current employer, the typical US 50h+ weeks would be squashed by the
works council.

~~~
blisterpeanuts
What if your colleagues are in the U.S.? Do you just turn off the phone until
9am the next day?

I'm on the east coast in the U.S. and I have colleagues in Britain, Germany,
California, Colorado, and Minneapolis. If we stuck to strict working hours,
we'd never be able to communicate in real time!

The guys in Europe sometimes are helping us until 10pm or 11pm which is not a
requirement but they're just dedicated and we really appreciate it. By the
same token, I'll get on a call at 6am local time, which works for them.

But maybe not everyone has to deal with all these time zones. We're a little
crazy.

~~~
pjmlp
> What if your colleagues are in the U.S.? Do you just turn off the phone
> until 9am the next day?

Yes, and I do work a lot with Asia actually.

On the projects that require me not to do it, we have special agreements in
place, where people are also compensated for sacrificing their private life in
name of the employers profits.

> The guys in Europe sometimes are helping us until 10pm or 11pm which is not
> a requirement but they're just dedicated and we really appreciate it. By the
> same token, I'll get on a call at 6am local time, which works for them.

Not all companies have works councils, which leads to the following
situations:

We have the guys fresh out of university feeling that they will improve their
career by working like crazy. Only to discover a few years later that they get
to be fired like everyone else on the company.

There are lots of people working as freelancer and getting paid by the hour.
Obviously they are their own boss and work as much as they feel like like it.

Not all companies have a works council that actively cares about the fellow
employees, in such cases many people don't report back to them unlawful
situations due to fear of what their boss might do.

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javanix
Isn't "except in emergencies" just asking for a company to liberally define
"emergency"?

~~~
Argorak
Most larger companies have time tracking and pay extra hours in such cases. If
that happens too often, controlling will definitely like to have a word with
you.

I worked for multiple larger corps as a freelancer and they are very strict
about "8 hours per day". They did the math and know that if I work 10, they
pay 2 hours for the same price, but at less efficiency.

~~~
eric_the_read
FYI, idiomatic English would read, "They did the math," not "They made the
math."

~~~
Argorak
Yep, it is way beyond idiomatic time in germany ;). Thanks for the correction,
you are right ;).

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oxryly1
Should delete this due to misleading title.

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balls187
Curious that the HN community thinks about this.

Is this such a problem that the some Labor Ministry has to enforce a rule?

Think of this in another context: would people be okay with Olympic Trainers
being banned from asking their athletes to train after hours?

~~~
6d0debc071
> Is this such a problem that the some Labor Ministry has to enforce a rule?

Dunno, don't have the data.

Anecdotally: I get called after hours from time to time, but then again I get
paid a lot in return. Calling me after work, whatever you want, costs several
hundred pounds a go.

My sister, who works a bunch of part time jobs in retail and other minimum
wage things get called on after hours as well. And she doesn't get paid for it
beyond not being fired. She'd never dare tell one of her managers not to call
her after work, because if she loses one of her jobs she's going to have
trouble paying her bills.

In my case the conditions in my contract ensure that I only get called if it's
important. That's my protection from being constantly exploited. But... my
sister doesn't have that - and frankly has no hope of ever having it.

Should it be legal to take that sort of advantage of someone in that weak a
bargaining position? We have the concept of undue influence in contract law,
and this strikes me as the same _sort_ of thing.

It's like when you have a contract between two companies, the companies are
expected to be protected by having a contract that they both understand and
have negotiated from positions of relative equality. Whereas, between
companies and individuals, the individual is generally expected to be mostly
protected by the allowances of consumer protection law.

> would people be okay with Olympic Trainers being banned from asking their
> athletes to train after hours?

Well, I would. If the athlete does it of their own free will, then that's
fine. But if they're being coerced by a desire not to get fired... well, 'Fuck
you, pay me.' springs to mind.

~~~
balls187
> But if they're being coerced by a desire not to get fired... well, 'Fuck
> you, pay me.' springs to mind.

Agreed. Exploiting = bad.

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blisterpeanuts
"Self-exploitation."

Isn't that newspeak for what we used to call hard work?

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rsync
I've never understood this aspect of European culture.

What's a manager ? What are staff ?

Presuming that the state has formalized definitions for these things, what is
the purpose ? Why is it assumed that someone is, or has, an employer, and why
would we pigeonhole people into extremely narrow (and increasingly irrelevant)
social roles ?

~~~
adamors
First, read the article and you'll see that the title is misleading. It
concerns only the staff of the German labour ministry. Second, Germany =/=
Europe.

