Colombia: a proposed law on the right to disconnect in the wake of the coronavirus crisis

A bill on the right to digital disconnection and respect for the boundaries between work and personal life was tabled this week in Colombia’s House of Representatives. The legislation provides that every company, regardless of size, must implement a policy on disconnection, ‘in agreement with the workers,’ which must define how this right is to be exercised and guaranteed, and provide for a digital disconnection protocol regarding ICT use in the workplace that respects working time | rest time boundaries, the non-compliance of which may be classed as harassment. Excluded from the bill’s scope are company executives, those who must be available due to the nature of their function, and cases of force majeure. “Workers have the legitimate right not to receive calls, ‘WhatsApp’ messages, e-mails, and any other similar type of work-related communication outside working hours and, if they receive them, they have the right not to respond until the beginning of the next working day, without employers being able to take any type of action against them,” explained Rodrigo Rojas, a member of the minority Liberal party, but who took advantage of the massive wave of teleworking to raise the profile of his legislative initiative. According to figures from the Ministry of Telecommunications, in 2016, 95,000 people were teleworking and by 2019 this number had risen to 300,000. There are currently an estimated 3 million teleworkers, or 12% of the working population.