Responding to the ‘Rapidification’ of Working Life : the Right to Disconnect

Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical, Laudato si’ – on Care for our Common Home, is best known for its theological perspective on climate change. Yet its scope is wider and this is captured in his idea that we need to adopt the perspective of ‘integral ecology’, which he described as ‘one which clearly respects its human and social dimensions’. Human ecology demands attention to the environment of daily life, which includes the working environment. Francis observed a tendency for ‘a more intensified pace of life and work which might be called ‘rapidification’'. He later linked this phenomenon to the intersection of ‘labour, time and technology’. This aspect of Francis’ teaching was highlighted in a 2018 report on the future of work by the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union. It called on the EU to take measures to tackle a ‘a culture of permanent availability’ and specifically to amend the Working Time Directive in order to incorporate a ‘right to disconnect’. Such debates pre-date the pandemic, but the sudden increase and sustained reliance on remote working has brought these questions to the forefront of public policy. In particular, the idea of a right to disconnect has received growing attention in both Ireland and the EU. In order to understand better the case for creating such a right, and what it might entail, this essay reviews some of the data emerging on the experience of remote working during the pandemic. It then considers what measures already exist within EU law in respect of the right to rest from work. Notwithstanding the value of current legal protections, it proposes that establishing an explicit right to disconnect is necessary in order to respond fully to the erosion of the boundary between work and rest that can arise from remote working