Unpaid overtime. Bosses aren’t gonna stop you.
Actually, they might. Everything electronic is monitored. Emails, computer time, anything done on an employer’s tech. That said, so what? If the employer isn’t violating any laws and/or regs, that should be between employer and employee.
Suck it up and be grateful, snowflakes. And if you don’t want to, find a different gig.
It is an issue for non exempt hourly workers. It is a violation of FSLA rules to work without getting paid. Just checking probably isn't, but if they spend time responding it certainly is. A large firm my actually lockout their hourly employees from IT systems after hours.
It depends. In my company, we have non-exempt (hourly) and exempt (salaried) employees.
The non-exempt employees have to "punch" a time clock (actually it's an app on our website) and are paid accordingly, including overtime if they exceed eight hours in a day or 40 hours in a week.
For those employees, we don't want them receiving email outside working hours because then we would have to pay them overtime. So we built software into our systems that prevent those employees from receiving email when they are not on the clock.
We were actually involved in a class action lawsuit several years ago regarding this, so that is why we went to the software solution.
Salaried employees, of course, are exempt from OT and they get the email 24/7. But seriously, we don't expect them to be actually answering and responding to email during their off time (though many of them do).
In my management position, I do consider myself obligated to check my email around the clock and I do respond to any urgent situations that may come up not matter what time of day. But I accepted that level of responsibility when I took the job so I don't bitch and complain about it.
It may or may not be unpaid. In any case, if an employee doesn’t like it, he or she can get a new job.