Faced with the boom in teleworking brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, Maltese MEP Alex Agius Saliba (S&D) has been given the task of preparing an own-initiative report to guarantee a right to disconnect at EU level. His goal is for the European Commission to propose a directive.
While regular telework remains in the minority, affecting only about 5% of European workers over the last decade (with wide disparities between Member States), the pandemic has led to a boom in this way of working in the EU as a result of lockdown rules.
According to a Eurofound survey, in a poll carried out last April, 37% of respondents replied that they had started teleworking because of health restrictions. However, with the extreme flexibility of teleworking, inappropriate behaviour on the part of employers and colleagues has increased sharply, forcing employees to be constantly ready to answer e-mails and phone calls and disregarding statutory working hours. Above all, the regulatory framework and the level of protection vary greatly from one Member State to another. Only four Member States currently have a regulatory framework: France, Belgium, Italy and Spain.
One of the rapporteur’s main objectives is therefore to establish a minimum framework at European level by means of a directive. He is thus introducing an article requiring Member States to ensure that employers cannot discriminate, dismiss, or take other unfavourable measures on the grounds that workers have exercised or sought to exercise their right to disconnect.
In addition, the rapporteur suggests that, when workers believe that they have been dismissed on the grounds that they have exercised or sought to exercise their right to disconnect and are able to establish, before a court or other competent authority, facts from which it may be presumed that they were dismissed on those grounds, the onus should be on the employer to prove that the dismissal was based on other grounds.
The European Parliament’s Employment and Social Policy Committee (EMPL) met for the first time on 7 September to discuss the draft own-initiative report. The date for tabling of amendments is 15 September. A vote in the Commission is expected to take place by the end of the year, we are told, and in Parliament’s plenary session in the first quarter of 2021. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)