A new bill would make it illegal for NYC bosses to contact employees after work hours

Time Out New York ^ | Thursday March 22 2018, 2:07pm | Clayton Guse

[Olog-hai]

A City Council member wants to crack down on bosses who require their employees to maintain contact after hours, and his idea is picking up steam.

Raphael Espinal, who represents the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Bushwick, Bronwsville, Cypress Hills and East New York, is set to introduce a bill in a City Council meeting on Thursday that establishes New Yorkers’ “right to disconnect.” The legislation would make it illegal for employers to require employees to access work-related electronic communication outside of their regular work period.

If passed, the law would allow workers who are regularly bombarded by urgent, late-night emails from their bosses to issue complaints to the city’s Department of Consumer Affairs, which would then proceed launch an investigation. The legislation only applies to businesses with at least 10 employees, and those that are found to be in violation of the law would be subject to civil fines. […]

The bill will be presented to the City Council on Thursday. It currently has no co-sponsors, but Espinal hopes to hold a hearing on it in a meeting of the Committee on Consumer Affairs and Business Licensing (of which he is the chair) before the summer. …

[Glenmore]

We (exempt) may have to be compensated for off-hours work, which tends to mean we are not allowed to do off-hours work. But we are evaluated on getting our job done, so we work off-hours secretly:

[exDemMom]

Yes, I am aware that many of our exempt employees do extra on their own time. But they are not so blatant about it that I can catch them red-handed.

We do have to compensate them for extra hours worked, but they have to request the compensation.

I am in a completely different category. Active duty military. Those categories don’t quite apply to me. I just have to enforce them.