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Seoul Considers Messaging Ban After Work Hours (thestack.com) 76

Posted by msmash from the after-work dept.
An anonymous reader writes: The city legislature of Seoul, South Korea, is considering implementing a law that would ban after work messaging to employees, in an effort to reduce work-related stress among employees. Members of the Seoul Metropolitan Council proposed a revision to a public ordinance that would ban after-work messaging to employees of the city's government. The new rule is an attempt to guarantee employees the right to restand states that employee privacy must not be subject to employer contact outside of work hours. If passed, it would ban managers from contacting public sector employees after work hours through phone calls, text messaging, or social networking. Kim Kwang-soo, one of the councilors who submitted the ordinance revision, said that the Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) must guarantee the rights of city workers by protecting them from undue stress. He said, "Of course SMG officials must always be prepared for the needs of citizens, but many of them are working under conditions that infringe on their right to rest."
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Seoul Considers Messaging Ban After Work Hours More

Seoul Considers Messaging Ban After Work Hours

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  • Need to be passed for Private sector as well (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ghoul ( 157158 ) on Friday October 28, 2016 @09:53AM (#53168393)

    The always on culture means that basically you are never really on just stuck in a state between on and off and it leads to dumb decisions - Apple's Macbook design team is a prime example

    • Re:Need to be passed for Private sector as well (Score:4, Funny)

      by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Friday October 28, 2016 @01:25PM (#53169809) Journal
      I think Apple's problem is that a lot of the really good people left after the iPhone was released (or they died, I guess). Around 2010 I started to notice that the quality of lower-level library code had dropped. Then a couple years later, the quality of tools like xcode dropped. Now the quality problem is obvious even in the Keynote speeches.

  • Outright bans are too ham-handed. What about a yearly limit or stepped tax or an hour's worth of overtime pay per message as a discouragement.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by gmack ( 197796 )
      This won't fix the problem. I have this problem now where my employer expects to on every other weekend be "available for on call" where I get paid per hour worked where someone calls me. The downside of this is that I have to be A: Somewhere I have cell phone reception. B: Within 30 mins of a computer I can VPN to the office with at any given time. Those two restrictions mean that I must restrict my movements during on call hours so I don't feel like it's actually time off but most of the time I am not

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Tablizer ( 95088 )

        Perhaps consider leaving. Jerks be jerks.

        If you otherwise like the work and company, then perhaps you can write up a nice diplomatic and complementing letter explaining that you otherwise enjoy working there, but that your "home tether" requirement is not being fairly compensated in your opinion, because it limits your off-work choices.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gmack ( 197796 )
          We are well past that point. Right now I'm waiting to hear back about some applications.
        • Welcome to the word of 24x7 services. If you want them to work more than 40 hours a week, somebody is going to have to be on-call. Many companies compensate in one way or another. Some consider flex/comp time and the pay/benefits of a salaried position with 401k match and yearly bonus to cover the occasional inconvenience. Either grow up and do your job, or get into a field that doesn't require on-call duty. See if it pays as much.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by ruir ( 2709173 )
        Being on call, means being paid because of said restrictions. Receiving a call means receiving at least 3 hours pay on top of that, to discourage pointless or rushed calls (where can I find x or y, where can i find the keys for z). If there are no fair rules, it sucks.
        • Mine is $100/wk for being on-call. If invoked, converts in $250 increments based on how many hours. I got a 30min call last Memorial Day which got me $750 for doing my job. Could be worse.

      • Since it sounds like you're already interviewing for other jobs, the solution is pretty simple: ignore the on-call stuff and do whatever you'd normally do. If they're able to reach you and you can help, fine (you apparently get extra pay for this). Otherwise, oh well... "sorry!". What are they going to do, fire you for a mistake? (Or rather, a "mistake".)

        Remember, it's always works better to beg forgiveness than to ask for permission.

      • This is a Korean cultural issue. Every employe stays at work until the boss leaves. Period. Sit at your desk and stare at your computer screen until the boss leaves. If the boss decides at 10 pm to have a dinner and drinks for 3 hours you MUST go. You are still expected to be at work at 7 am.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ghoul ( 157158 )

          Its not so clear cut. When I was a boss there were a lot of young bachelors with nothing to do at home who would stay late to surf the net, play games or whatever. If by chance I was working late to catch up on some things they would all stay . By the time I am leaving I know they are not going to get food at their paying guest locations and with their low starting salaries eating out is a dent in their savings. So I would take them along for dinner. Never 3 hours but dinner at a sit down restaurant easily

  • I'm contacted outside work hours because our business needs to operate during those hours and if there is a problem, someone has to take care of it. This idea is completely bonkers.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday October 28, 2016 @10:08AM (#53168481)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Well, what if OP is simply the most qualified and there is a 2nd/3rd shift that handles ops.
        Shit happens, and sometimes you need your *best* people to handle it.

        Now: That should be rarer than a blue moon, and the problem is when that kind of thing happens too often; a common problem.

        As to the article, what if my boss and I are personal friends as well?
        The way TFS reads, that friendship would be damaged.
        I would hope that the law stated "business or employment related contact".
        -nb

      • If you are a 24/7 shop then you should have adequate staffing for 2nd and 3rd shifts.

        We have a server problem maybe a couple times a year. It is absurd to staff up for 24/7/365 just to handle one or two hours of actual work annually. So occasionally I get a call. I fix the problem. That is part of my job.

        • Rotating pager (Score:3, Informative)

          by phorm ( 591458 )

          And so long as you're either not *expected* to be permanently available, that's not a problem. The issue is that some companies do not have staff/compensation for a 24/7/365 availability, but expect that their regular staff be available outside work hours as such. That means if you're in a movie, at the pool, on the road, drinking, etc and the server goes down for several hours, you get written up for it or even fired. It's extremely detrimental to the social lives and well-being of IT workers.

          It doesn't me

        • And what happens if you're on vacation in a national park away from cellular signals? Or you're in a theater and your phone is off? If the business can't survive that, and can't pay for someone to be available at these times, then they have no business operating.

    • well then clock in and take care of that Emergencies. Is your work place is to cheap to have a night shift or pay ot?

    • There is actually such a thing, called "on standby". It means people who know they might be called in, and get compensated for that. We have that, too, but it's certainly NOT one single guy doing that for 365 days a year. Why? Because it's a burnout waiting to happen.

      • I was a 24/7/365 standby for two companies, and loved it. In aggregate total it was for 7 years, no burnout.

        One was my fresh out of college job at a small networking company for what would today be a low 40s salary but nothing for on call. However I was only required to be in the office for 8 hours a week and they were hours of my choosing as long as it was consistent. I didn't even need to be "working" except to finish all of the things that needed to be done, as I had no co workers either (so naturally

  • In South Korea, business locks YOU up at night. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Pseudonymous Powers ( 4097097 ) on Friday October 28, 2016 @10:03AM (#53168461)

    The city legislature of Seoul, South Korea, is considering implementing a law that would ban after work messaging to employees...

    It's about time. What a chaebol's employees choose to do between 2 and 6 AM is their own damn business.

  • How are they suppose to hire people, if they can't contact people "after hours". Or what about if they need to call someone in to work more hours?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      How are they suppose to hire people, if they can't contact people "after hours". Or what about if they need to call someone in to work more hours?

      Then presumably you get in contact with them before they knock off for the night. Or you declare them to be "working" then send the message. The latter will likely mean you'll be working OT and getting time and a half or double time, so in that case, you'd want to make sure your message is damned important.

      The goal of the ban is to avoid "free" messaging during of

  • will be removed in Trans-Pacific Partnership lawsuit in a Investor-state dispute settlement as it's bad for business.

  • wpuldn't that depend on which shift you were on?

  • I read that as "after work massages.."

    I couldn't figure out why massages would increase stress...

    It's been a long week, I'll see myself out.

  • Alternative (Score:5, Interesting)

    by hipp5 ( 1635263 ) on Friday October 28, 2016 @10:52AM (#53168799)
    I spent a few years working for a Canadian municipality. Work COULD contact you after hours, but you were getting paid OT (with a minimum for hour much time you got to claim, even if the actual work was only 30 seconds). If you actually got called back into work you got to claim a minimum of 4 hours (at time and a half, so really 6 hours) even if it was only 15 minutes of work. This setup allowed our workplace to deal with emergencies, but the high cost to the employer made sure it was only used for mission-critical things.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Yup, I work for the US federal gov, it's actually criminal to not put in overtime if you are responding to stuff outside of work hours and you round up the time. The law is in place so if you get managers trying shit like that you pay the employees, and if the budget doesn't exist for that, they get to blame the manager for it and throw them in jail and make them pay for it. Not exactly enforced much, but they will do it if you start suing for unpaid overtime.

  • If a business needs to be active 24/7 then they should be paying to make that happen. Employees aren't the property of corporations.

  • If you want me 24/7, you pay me 24/7. Else my phone is off the moment my workday's over. You get what you pay for. Pay more, get more.

    Damn freeloaders.

  • I don't work in a job where I need to be on call anymore, but I have in the past. It sucks, especially one place where they offshored all the systems monitoring to some company that was literally just passing through alerts that could be taken care of during working hours. More frequently, I do see employers who feel they can expect 24/7 coverage from their IT staff without paying for it. Given Korean work culture, I can only imagine how much worse the pressure is on keeping people working all the time.

    If s

  • Wouldn't this just result in replacing on-call rotations with shift rotations? Like, if you can't call me for a 2am emergency, doesn't that mean a representative from my group needs to be in the office at all times? That sounds awful.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ghoul ( 157158 )

      You could put a center each in Singapore, Israel and US west Coast. With the time overlaps the amount of time someone outside their work hours would need to take a call is minuscule

  • The city legislature of Seoul, South Korea, is considering implementing a law that would ban after work messaging to employees

    What would you do if you needed something done after hours and were willing to pay for it, though?

  • Was North Korea messaging their government workers after office hours? That might explain a lot. Not a whole lot; still, quite a lot.

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