{"id":235887,"date":"2026-01-16T06:06:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T06:06:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/235887\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T06:06:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T06:06:07","slug":"new-zealand-urged-to-introduce-right-to-disconnect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/235887\/","title":{"rendered":"New Zealand urged to introduce Right to Disconnect"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Our laws haven&#8217;t kept up with modern ways of working. Current rules don&#8217;t protect workers&#8217; time or wellbeing. They allow employers to exploit power imbalances in their relationships with workers.&#8221; \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>New Zealand&#8217;s long working hours \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Grey pointed out that many New Zealand workers are constantly on the job, with long hours and overtime common. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Technology and remote work have erased the line between work and home. Workers shouldn&#8217;t have to go to a staff meeting on their day off, take their laptop to the beach in the weekend, or take a call from their boss at 10pm if they aren&#8217;t on call,&#8221; Grey said. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Data from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) revealed that New Zealand employees <a href=\"https:\/\/www.oecd.org\/en\/data\/indicators\/hours-worked.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">are working 1,751 hours a year<\/a>, slightly higher than the OECD average of 1,740 hours. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We work some of the longest hours in the OECD \u2013 and burnout, anxiety, and stress are on the rise,&#8221; Grey said. \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#8220;Our laws haven&#8217;t kept up with modern ways of working. Current rules don&#8217;t protect workers&#8217; time or wellbeing.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":235888,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[139440,1144,111,43,139,69,139439],"class_list":["post-235887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-employee-wellbeing","tag-human-resources","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-right-to-disconnect"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235887\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}