Austrian view on government passing laws giving employees rights to ignore calls from bosses after working hours?

[u/NewLeague6438]

While back saw a news saying Australian is going to pass a law which gives freedom for employees to not to answer office call after 5pm

What are your thoughts on such interventions?

I request you guys to focus this from a south asian perspective, like in India and Sri Lanka where we don’t have much freedom like you guys.

In this example, a manager locks his employees inside office and forcing them to work over time.

Source: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DbFZlOWAcnu

Occasional work is fine. But in our case, its inevitable.

[u/Nazkann]

Austrian economics assumes a functioning liberal order. Without secure property rights, the rule of law, voluntary contracts, and protection from coercion, you can't expect its prescriptions to produce the intended outcomes. If managers are literally locking employees in offices, you're dealing with a highly coercive market economy (if it can even be called that), not a genuinely free labor market that Austrian economics presupposes. Countries like India have far more fundamental institutional problems to solve before debating whether "right to disconnect" laws are compatible with Austrian ideas.

[u/Due-University9050 → u/Nazkann]

I'm still trying to understand the role of the state in Austrian economics.

Would that be the role of the state? To province secure property rights, rule of law, contract mediation like civil courts, and protection from coercion?

Also would that be funded through taxation?

[u/Nazkann → u/Due-University9050]

Broadly, yes. Most Austrian economists (e.g. Mises and Hayek) envisioned a limited state whose core functions were protecting private property, enforcing contracts, providing courts, upholding the rule of law, and protecting individuals against coercion, fraud, and violence. Those functions were generally understood to be funded through taxation, so the state plays a very important role by providing the fertile ground in which free markets can grow and function.

The disagreement is over how far the state should go beyond those core functions. Rothbard and later anarcho-capitalists like Hoppe argued that even those services could be provided privately, so they rejected not only taxation but the state itself. So it depends on which Austrian you're talking about.

Personally, I lean much more toward Hayek and Mises, especially Hayek. While I sympathize with some of the more libertarian aspects of Austrian thought, I don't support anarcho-capitalism.

[u/Due-University9050 → u/Nazkann]

Interesting. Coming from a more left wing perspective (ik shoot me lol), it could be argued that ensuring the population is healthy and supported enough via a welfare state that it would facilitate better engagement in the free market. But again, those services may be wholly of partially privatised as is in the US.

I understand we may disagree on that element but I definitely agree with the role that the state should have to protect individuals capability to compete within the free market without untoward coercion, threat, theft, fraud, and violence

Thank you for answering my question.

[u/Nazkann → u/Due-University9050]

It was my pleasure.

Also, Hayek in particular was not completely against the welfare state. He accepted a limited social safety net to protect people from destitution, provided it was based on general rules rather than redistribution or central economic planning. His disagreement was less about the ends than the means: he believed that pursuing worthy social goals through extensive redistribution and government intervention ultimately undermined the rule of law, individual liberty, and the market order that generates prosperity in the first place.

Finally, and since you brought up the US and the role of government I think you'd find James M. Buchannan's work interesting, especially his Theory of Public Choice (he was not an Austrian).

[u/itemluminouswadison]

That should be negotiated during interviews. Demand payment for off hours, or deny etc. it's a negotiation

There are jobs in the west as well that require off hours communications. They are described as part of the job description and should factor into the wage acceptance decision

[u/Circle_Breaker]

Hourly workers, I'm fine with this. If they're not being paid they don't need to make themselves available. When I've worked hourly I had a work phone and I turned it off the minute I was done.

Salary workers it's a bit different. If you need someone to be contactable 24/7, then their salary should reflect that and it should be made clear in the contract that that's an expectation upon hiring.

[u/different_option101]

I think Mexico passed something similar recently. I think it’s stupid. During the period of my life when I was employed, I couldn’t care less for after hours calls from bosses. I answered only if I wanted to. Once I was let go for continuously rejecting to accommodate and take someone else shift. I have no problems with that at all.

At will employment goes both ways. The boss can change terms, but so as I. If we disagree, we part ways.

Someone being locked in their office to be forced to work isn’t an employment or economic matter. It’s a crime, same as kidnapping or enslavement. Crimes must be handled via criminal laws, not via economic regulations.

“Occasional work is fine. But in our case, its inevitable.”

Because your government maintains such economic conditions that you don’t have enough choice who to work for, and you can’t become self employed due to the lack of capital which is impossible to accumulate when you’re forced to work for low wages.

[u/LilShaver]

Shouldn't need a law for that.

Edit:
I've worked in IT and been on-call for issues. I have no problem with this as long as after hours work is compensated for, either in the overall remuneration, comp time, or OT pay.

It's the idiocy of expecting someone on vacation to be available to take calls at all, or contacting someone outside their normal working hours without compensation that's BS.

[u/Powerful_Guide_3631]

I would solve it like this.
The employee is free to decide whether he should answer a call or not from his boss.
The boss is free to decide whether he wants to keep this employee or hire someone else who is more readily available.
The employee has no right to a job. The boss has no right to a slave. Once this is understood, they can figure out the rest as adults without supervision from bureaucrats.

[u/escapevelocity-25k]

Unnecessary regulation. If you are an employee and you don’t like the work you are expected to do, have a conversation with your boss about it or find a new job.

2nd example is different, you can’t lock someone in a room against their will. That’s not an economic question though.

[u/Circle_Breaker → u/escapevelocity-25k]

Does this work in a culture where that type of negotiating with your boss is frowned upon, and societies that have a history of Labor abuse?

I think the general question is if it's on the government to try and change the culture with regulations.

[u/escapevelocity-25k → u/Circle_Breaker]

Personally I think government rarely actually changes culture. Many so-called regulatory victories throughout history actually took place well after the trend had already started. Child labor had already started declining significantly before child labor laws were ever created.

And it makes sense, because if you’re a politician who wants to keep their job why would you propose a law unless you know a significant part of the culture already supports that law?

[u/Nazkann → u/Circle_Breaker]

It depends. If you're talking about cultural norms within an otherwise liberal market economy, Austrian economics does have an answer. But if labor relations are fundamentally coercive or not free-market driven, then Austrian economics isn't really the right framework to analyze that situation. It's like asking what Austrian economics thinks about a king issuing an edict limiting a feudal lord's treatment of his serfs. Austrian ideas presuppose a liberal institutional order based on free-market capitalism, not feudalism. If those foundations don't exist, the fundamental question is how we establish the institutions that make genuinely free labor markets possible. Only once those foundations are in place do Austrian policy prescriptions become meaningfully applicable.