Features of social protection by implementing the right to disconnect

Abstract

The article examines the realisation of the right to disconnect in the framework of workers’ social protection. The study explores different approaches to the definition of a new right. The right to disconnect is analysed on the basis of targeting and universality of social protection, soft and hard measures, the components of the new right, which include workers’ opportunity, employers’ responsibility, communication between employers and workers, protection from adverse consequences. The legal acts that serve as a foundation of the right to disconnect create a separate work pattern of teleworkers, which affects the formation of the targeting approach to social protection. The regulation of the right to disconnect introduced in European Social Partner framework agreement on digitalisation and European Parliament resolution of 21 January 2021 with recommendations to the Commission on the right to disconnect gives a more universal approach. The Resolution acknowledges the right to disconnect as a fundamental right and proposes hard regulatory and technological measures to ensure observation of work and rest periods. The agreement is based on the change in corporate culture. It is revealed that nowadays the right to disconnect serves as the only project aimed at regulating digital working relations in the framework of social protection of remote workers, however R2D can be limited by a narrow category of teleworkers. Debates over the right to disconnect touch upon the issue of the effectiveness of social dialogue in the context of adaptation to digital work organisation, as well as the possibility of keeping binary understanding of work and rest periods.