The Right to Disconnect in the post Covid-19 Digital Workplace By Rhona Jamieson, MSt English (1900-present) student at Lincoln College
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Imagine, if you can, a small room, hexagonal in shape, like the cell of a bee. It is lighted neither by window nor by lamp, yet it is filled with a soft radiance. There are no apertures for ventilation, yet the air is fresh. There are no musical instruments, and yet, at the moment that my meditation opens, this room is throbbing with melodious sounds. An armchair is in the centre, by its side a reading-desk — that is all the furniture. And in the armchair there sits a swaddled lump of flesh — a woman, about five feet high, with a face as white as a fungus. E. M. Forster’s 1909 short story, ‘The Machine Stops,’ opens with a vision of the human as a worker-bee in an artificial underground environment of cells. This picture of the human as constantly connected, yet physically isolated, has perhaps never seemed as prescient as it does today. Over the last two months, those members of the British public who are not key workers have been forced to adapt to a life lived online – school, socializing, exercising and work are now undertaken via Microsoft Teams, Zoom and FaceTime, from the safety of the home. COVID-19 has acted as a catalyst upon existing trends towards increased technological connectedness. Indeed, what has surprised many during the current lockdown is the degree of effectiveness achieved by the movement to a virtual workplace. While any success of productivity in these adverse conditions must be applauded, this pandemic is changing, perhaps permanently, the way in which we work.
I must preface my remarks with a clear acknowledgement that the development of the digital workplace is not by any means the single most important crisis regarding employment for the UK today. Indeed, it is perhaps rather far down a list including, firstly, the health of key workers and those returning to work before the implementation of an effective TTI The price of the muchsystem, and vaunted “flexibility’ of neos e c o n d l y, liberal employment is the the imminent rise of blurring of the boundaries u n e m p l oybetween work-time and restment. The time. ending of Rishi Sunak’s furlough scheme will mean the sudden unemployment of thousands across the UK. Meanwhile, those dependent on the hospitality 34
sector, young people and graduates seeking work, and the victims of business’s spending cuts, will find themselves jobless while the country enters recession and employment opportunities dwindle. Yet, we cannot allow our desperation for work to lead us into a complacent idealisation of the state of employment, or to distract us from certain liberties employers may begin to take. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an unprecedented entry of work into the domestic sphere. For the time being, the possibility of such an arrangement is saving jobs and businesses. Yet the danger lies in the coinciding of certain conditions, namely: (1) the new realisation of the possibilities of technological connectedness, (2) the generosity of those hoping to help students, customers, clients, etc., cope with such testing conditions, and (3) the willingness of those desperate to maintain their jobs to work beyond their brief. It is a risk of setting a precedent in which the worker is always reachable from home, constantly connected.
The fact remains that in the majority of cases the standard and quantifiable measurement of work is time, and this is most accurately measured by time spent in a place of work. Most workers are paid according to the hours they work, with the acceptance of overtime. The price of the much-vaunted “flexibility’ of neo-liberal employment is the blurring of the boundaries between work-time and rest-time. While there is inevitably a certain amount of emailing and telephone communication that will occur outside the workplace given the ubiquity of modern technology, the COVID-19 crisis must not lead to an insidious increase in the expectation that the worker is constantly connected, and constantly “alert”. The worker’s sense of responsibility and accountability cannot be extended around the clock. The current lockdown is
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