The Right to Disconnect: a Response to One of the Challenges Raised by the Digital Transition? European and Belgian perspectives

The digital transition has blurred the spatial and temporal boundaries of work. The hyper-connection of employees calls for new regulatory responses which, without deconstructing labour law, would be better adapted to life in modern society.
The rules on working hours and the respect thereof are, in fact, based on the industrial work model. They are ill-suited for various modern forms of work organisation, particularly those linked to the intensive use of digital devices. Under the current legal framework, many, albeit not all, workers have the legal tools to disconnect once they have left their place of work. However, practice shows that the efficiency and effectiveness of these legal tools are somewhat frayed. The employees most exposed to digital invasion are precisely those who are not protected by the Working Time Act. Is it therefore necessary to go as far as the express legal proclamation of a right to disconnect? This is not the option chosen by Belgian law. In any case, if the proclamation of such a right is not accompanied by measures that would ensure its effectiveness, this proclamation would be merely symbolic: it is, then, better to turn to the standard law on well-being at work, which can be more usefully exploited in order to contribute to the improvement of the quality of one’s work life in a more satisfactory way.
Nevertheless, the right to escape digital invasion must not be limited to the right to cut oneself off from one’s professional world once the work day is over; it must also be considered during working hours in view of protecting the workers against information overload and allowing them to preserve the quality of life at work and their overall psycho-social well-being.