[apillar]

Lol! Where’s my passport...

[AU72]

The off switch is your friend.

[Billthedrill]

It wouldn’t work in my little corner of the IT biz. Fortunately for me, if the Boss does call...it’s an emergency or about to become something we can spend five minutes fixing now or five hours fixing in the morning.

[SamAdams76]

I got news for you. This goes on in America too. I am a manager in my company and I am not allowed to contact any employee after 5PM unless I am willing to pay them overtime.

[C210N]

In this glowBull economy, how is this going to work with a German manager contacting workers in the US, India, Austrailia?

When we go to a one-world-govt, will we go to a one-world-time-zone as well?

[vpintheak]

I’m on the fence for this one. On 1 hand, stuff needs to get fixed right away. There are emergencies so you need ot be contacted. On the other, a rude boss can call you for minor reasons after hours making you feel like you never leave work.
Lets just let the business decide huh government?

[Gen.Blather]

Wow, real nanny state. A company I worked for gave us all Blackberries and we were on call 24/7. If the alarm went off there as a 20 person call list. Whoever answered would have to drive, some of them an hour or more, to the plant and let the cops in. Amazingly, it always cycled through all 20 and ended up with the president. They all claimed to be out of range. But I knew they did what I did and shut the damned thing off at night. OH, the the best part? There was no extra pay and no time off for the inconvenience.

[riri]

Cue in the Freepers to tell us all how the Germans are such hard workers. (snort, chuckle....)

[Candor7]

Manager telefonisch oder per E-Mail Mitarbeiter nach der Arbeit verbieten

[MNDude]

What if you have auto-foward on (like you want your message forwarded to your secretary while you’re out of town, then you have to turn it off?

What if a manager wants to wish someone a happy birthday, they can’t do that?

It’s not often that I’m reading the news about my industry after hours, and forward it on to everyone on my team. Forwarding news articles would be prohibited as well?

As someone else mentioned, what if that employee is working remote in a different time zone and has different work hours?

Seems like it’s more from the usual “Work is a pain in the ass” crowd.

[Red Badger]

[ansel12]

As a repair contractor, I had to threaten to dump a customer who kept calling me to set up routine appointments and to discuss routine business after work hours and on weekends, once he figured out that I worked out of my home and answered my telephone 24 hours a day.

I told him that I answered the phone after hours and on weekends in case someone had an emergency call, and that he needed to make his routine calls during business hours and quit bothering me when I was off work.

He was always a mild acting, passive-aggressive kind of guy, and was clearly doing it as some kind of power trip, I had to tell him to stop doing it, or find another contractor.

[Graybeard58]

My wife has a company provided cell phone that she has to keep with her. She doesn’t mind, it’s one of the conditions of employment in her position.

[bigbob]

This crap has been going on for years. When I was working for a Fortune 50 company 10 years+ ago, it was common to exchange email over nights and weekends, especailly as we were supposed to be “part of a global management team”. Except, the EUro-based members of said team got special dispensation to ignore anything outside working hours, due to the same kind of thinking put forth here. You’d be accused of “not thinking globally” if you didn’t involve them, or catch hell for being slow to respond if you waited until they were finished sipping wine and noshing on brie.

And heaven help you if you ever so much as think about shutting down a factory or office in Europe. There’ll be a walk-out the next day and you’ll be paying them a lifetime annuity even if you do it.

[VanDeKoik]

That’s interesting.

I was just watching a BBC documentary about the history of the German and British auto industry, and they mentioned a Germany car company that had been doing that already.

Why do they need to make it a law is beyond me.

[mikrofon]

Ich bin ein Bannedmailer

[DallasDeb]

I’ll drink to that! I think this is the reason Americans are so much more productive. There time “away from work” is being on call and expected to work after hours and on weekends—without extra pay. Such has been the case with the last three companies where I have worked the past 3 decades.

[lee martell]

Don’t call us, we’ll call you (maybe!).

[Gay State Conservative]

Germany is one of the few nations left who make products that people actually seek out rather than tolerate (think Chinese made goods).My last three cars are from German manufatureres and were made *in Germany*.This policy makes it look like Germany is shooting itself in the foot....if employees don't like being contacted during off hours they can find another employer.I worked in health care for 20+ years and for the first 10 or so I often carried a beeper...nights,weekends,holidays,etc.Yes,I was paid for it...as these Germans can be paid for off hours contacting.

[Ancesthntr]

I find it interesting that the Germans are also ready to send/mobilize troops to reinforce NATO. Are these troops to have the same kind of rules? Wouldn’t want them to be overly stressed, would we?

Wow. Just, wow. We have already turned into an Idiocracy.