Australia gave millions of workers the legal right to "disconnect" on Monday, allowing them to ignore unreasonable out-of-hours contact from employers, to the distress of big industry.People can now "refuse to monitor, read, or respond to" their employers' attempts to contact them outside work hours -- unless that refusal is deemed "unreasonable". 

Australian workers on Monday gained the legal right to ignore emails and phone calls from bosses outside of work hours, unless doing so is deemed “unreasonable”.

Australia is not the first country to introduce a right to disconnect from work.

In 2017, France introduced legislation to protect workers from being punished for not replying to messages outside of work hours, while Germany, Italy and Canada have adopted similar measures.