The 'right to switch off' law will be a litmus test for Labour's plans for workers' rights

Many of us will be familiar with the situation: you’re supposed to be working a nine-to-five job, but find yourself responding to emails, texts and phone calls long after the workday is supposed to have ended. In fact, so long as there’s always the chance of another email, WhatsApp message or Slack notification appearing just around the corner, it can feel as though you never really stop working. At any moment, precious ‘free time’ can readily become ‘remote work’. 

In 2023, TUC analysis found that around 3.8 million UK workers clocked a total of £26bn worth of unpaid hours – averaging more than seven extra hours per person each week. While responding to out of-hours communication might not feel like work, it really is nothing more than unpaid labour. In a country like the UK, where stress, depression and anxiety are the leading causes of work-related illness, this is a serious issue. British employees already work some of the longest hours in Europe and enjoy fewer national holidays than their counterparts. Long working hours and an increased blurring of working and non-working time are damaging workers and the economy alike.

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This dissolution of boundaries between ‘work’ and ‘free time’ is why the Labour government’s pledge for a new ‘right to switch off’ – as part of its ‘New Deal for Working People’ – is so desperately needed. For far too long, workers’ rights in the UK have languished behind those enjoyed by their European neighbours, rolled back steadily by successive governments, the outdated products of an economy that has long since transformed. 

In this context, giving workers a new capacity to say “no” to employers who try to squeeze out unpaid labour by contacting staff outside of their contracted hours should be a common sense update. After all, this is a digital world where workers are separated from bosses by only the touch of a button. Unsurprisingly, a ‘right to switch off’ is popular, with recent polling finding that over 50% of the UK public back the policy (and only 17% opposed).

The devil, however, will lie in the details. While the ‘right to switch off’ formed part of the Labour Party’s general election manifesto, and has been floated by government spokespeople in the months since, to date there has still been little detail on how the policy would work – and remained conspicuously absent from the recent King’s Speech. This ambiguity is significant, as not every ‘right to switch off’ is created equal.

Our recent briefing for the Autonomy Institute reflected this where, having examined examples of the policy in a number of countries worldwide, we charted the different paths that a new UK right to switch off might take. On the one hand, a ‘soft’ version of the policy could amend existing employment legislation to give workers the right to ignore out-of-hours communication, without fear of penalisation. An even ‘softer’ version might see no legal grounding for a right to switch off altogether, instead simply suggesting that bosses leave workers alone during unpaid hours as an update to the UK Government’s ‘code of practice’ for businesses.

On the other, a ‘hard’ right to switch off would not only permit workers to ignore out-of-hours communication – it would also put in place measures to punish employers who ignore the spirit of the legislation by repeatedly contacting workers. This ‘hard’ version of the policy reflects much more closely equivalent legislation in France, Portugal and Australia (among others), and accounts for the widespread evidence that – from the minimum wage, to equal pay, working hours, health and safety, and beyond – workers’ rights are only as good as they can be properly enforced and employers be held to account.

In this light, there are early causes for concern. Previous promises to outlaw exploitative zero-hours contracts and implement a single worker status risk being delayed and watered down through new ‘consultation’ periods, while newly-bolstered rights to flexible working and condensed hours will also be subject to employers’ agreement.

This is why the right to switch off is set to act as a litmus test for Labour’s much-vaunted plan for workers’ rights more broadly. Will the process be ‘employer-led’ – through ‘opt-in’ agreements, pre-legislative consultations and weak enforcement mechanisms? Or will it genuinely put power back in the hands of workers following decades of disenfranchisement? Should Keir Starmer opt for a ‘soft’ version of the policy, or simply detach it from legislative protection altogether, we might worry that the ‘new deal for working people’ will cleave to style over substance.

The new Labour government has the opportunity to implement a generational transformation of the economy, through a legislative programme that speaks to the challenges of a modern economy and re-empowers workers after far too long. A right to switch off epitomises this opportunity, sat squarely at the intersection of both long-awaited modernisation and workplace rebalancing. How it fares in the forthcoming Employment Rights Bill will bear attention.

Jack Kellam is head of operations at The Autonomy Institute, a think tank focused on the future of work.

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