The introduction of a right to disconnect quickly slashed the amount of unpaid overtime worked by Australians by a third, with unions sounding the alarm over Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s plan to scrap the reform if he wins the upcoming election.

From August last year, Australian workers have had a legislated right to not be required to respond to “unreasonable” work-related communications outside of their paid hours.

This was passed into law early last year but rejected by the Coalition, with Dutton promising to overturn the legislation if he wins government in the upcoming election.

The right to disconnect is currently in place for workers at businesses with 15 or more employees and will come into effect for smaller businesses from August this year.

Unpaid overtime going down

According to data from the Centre for Future Work, the overtime worked by the average Australian fell from 5.4 to 3.6 hours per week in the three months after the right to disconnect came into effect.

Younger workers aged between 18 and 29 years old enjoyed an even larger drop in unpaid overtime, with a 40 per cent reduction in this time.

“While it is early days, these laws could already be having a positive impact including through raised awareness that workers should be free to enjoy their personal time without work demands,” the Centre for Future Work report said.

“Our research indicates that unpaid overtime hours were fewer in 2024 than in previous years, both pre- and post-COVID pandemic years.”

Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Sally McManus used the figures on the one-year anniversary of Dutton promising to scrap the right to disconnect to push for it to be retained.

“Peter Dutton has promised to take away people’s right to disconnect if he is elected, which will result in a pay cut for many workers and give the green light to bad employers to normalise free work from Australians as an expectation of the job,” McManus said in a statement.

“For too long, some employers expected people to work for free after their scheduled working hours.

“This has significantly decreased since the introduction of the Albanese government’s right to disconnect laws.”

A survey conducted by the Centre for Future Work recently found that more than half of the respondents considered leaving work on time and not being interrupted by work after hours or on weekends as being very important.

“Our survey results show that being able to disconnect from work outside of scheduled work hours is very important to workers,” the report said.

Not all are fans

The right to Disconnect has been criticised by a number of big business groups and the Coalition, with Dutton saying it would impact productivity.

The right to disconnect is required to be included in awards for employees working at companies with more than 15 workers.

It is about “generally allowing an employee to refuse contact or attempted contact from their employer outside the employee’s working hours”, with employers facing fines if they ignore a Fair Work Commission stop order regarding contacting employees unreasonably.

The right to disconnect does not prevent bosses from contacting employees outside of their working hours, but it does prevent them from punishing the employee if they do not respond to an “unreasonable” message or call.

While unpaid overtime has gone down, the Centre for Future Work report found it is still a massive issue, with the average worker conducting 188 hours per year in unpaid work, equating to $7,713 in lost earnings annually.

Full-time workers performed the most unpaid overtime, according to the stats, with an average of 4.1 hours per week, while self-employed workers performed 3.5 hours, and casual workers did 2.3 hours.