If you’ve caught the news lately, you may have heard about historic Right to Disconnect laws won by union members.
You and your fellow workers across DECYP aren’t covered by this specific law because the Tasmanian State Service operates under its own state-based rules, and not the Fair Work Act that governs private sector workplaces.
But – you do have the right to disconnect!
The Right to Disconnect is about workers being able to switch off from work communication outside of work hours – only reading emails in work hours, switching off work apps and ignoring work calls or messages.
You enforcing your right to disconnect is an essential step to protect our profession from unfair workloads, increases to psychosocial injuries like burn out, or even feeling forced to walk away from the job you love.
DECYP recently released shocking new data showing workers’ comp claims relating to psychological injury have risen 32% for teaching staff and 40% for other staff over the past 12 months.
Is work eating into your private time? Are you feeling pressure to complete admin, reporting, communicating with families, marking or other tasks outside of your work hours?
Click here to put your hand up – YES, my workload is excessive and I’m ready to disconnect out of hours (visit the link and write a quick note to let your AEU organiser know)
So how does your right to disconnect work as an AEU member at DECYP?
Your union Agreement says that your tasks must not exceed what you can do within your work hours. It also sets out what your employer must do to monitor and resolve issues.
DECYP must respect your union Agreement rights protecting your psychosocial health and safety.
By working together and enforcing your rights, you and your coworkers can win the additional funding and resources your school or college needs to comply with these requirements.
Principals who are AEU members have the exact same rights – everyone will benefit when we work together to win the resources we need and the reasonable workloads we’re entitled to.
Here’s what your Agreement says:
24.1 The Employer will ensure that supervisors and managers are aware that the tasks allocated to employees must not exceed what can reasonably be performed in the hours for which they are employed.
24.2 The Employer will ensure that supervisors and managers implement procedures to monitor the hours worked of the employees they supervise and where employees regularly worl< hours in excess of the hours for which they are employed to perform their jobs, changes (technology, responsibility, extra resources) will be implemented.
PART V – WORKPLACE FLEXIBILITY
WORKLOAD MANAGEMENT
(a) The employer is to ensure that supervisors and managers are aware that the tasks allocated to employees must not exceed what can reasonably be performed in the hours for which they are employed.
(b) The employer is to ensure that supervisors and managers implement procedures to monitor the hours worked of the employees they supervise and where employees regularly work hours in excess of the hours for which they are employed to perform their jobs, changes (technology, responsibility, and extra resources) will be implemented.
(c) An employee who believes they have been allocated duties that exceed those that can be reasonably performed in the time allocated for them to be undertaken should formally advise their manager. Where practicable to do so the employee should suggest how their allocated tasks can be prioritised.
(d) A manager who has been advised in accordance with sub-clause (c) should respond promptly to the employee’s concerns. Where the manager acknowledges the workload is excessive the response should include a plan to reduce the workload to a manageable level. If the manager does not accept that the workload is excessive the response should outline such reasons.
(e) To minimise workload issues the employer is to make every effort to ensure vacancies are filled within three months. If it appears likely this period will be exceeded supervisors and/or managers will consult affected employees, giving the reasons why the vacancy will not be filled and advising how the workloads will be managed having regard to (a) and (b) above.
(f) In most circumstances temporary vacancies will be filled as they arise. Where a vacancy is not to be filled supervisors and managers will consult affected employees, giving the reasons why the vacancy will not be filled and advising how the workload will be managed having regard to (a) and (b) above.
Here’s what you can do now:
First, let us know if your workload is excessive and you are ready to disconnect out of hours.
The next step is to organise collectively to disconnect alongside our fellow educators at work! Talk to your AEU Rep, organise a meeting with union members in your workplace, and sign up a colleague who isn’t yet a member so they can get support to disconnect too – send them this link to join: aeutas.org.au/join
