Liberty, equality, fraternity — and now, the “right to disconnect.”

Among a host of new reforms, France’s labour minister, Myriam El Khomri, is including a provision that would give employees the right to ignore professional emails and other messages when outside the office. It would essentially codify a division between work and home, and, on a deeper level, between public and private life.

El Khomri apparently fleeced this idea from a report by Bruno Mettling, a director general in charge of human resources at Orange, the telecommunications giant. Mettling believes this policy would benefit employers as much as their employees, whom, he has said, are likely to suffer “psychosocial risks” from a ceaseless communication cycle. As reported in Le Monde, a recent study found than approximately 3.2 million French workers are at risk of “burning out,” defined as a combination of physical exhaustion and emotional anxiety. Although France is already famous for its 35-hour work week, many firms skirt the rules — often through employees who continue working remotely long after they leave for the day.

With France’s economy stagnant and an unemployment rate of 10.6 per cent, a near all-time high, the value of the 35-hour work week, in place since the 1990s, has elicited a considerable amount of debate in recent months. A recent proposal, for instance, would give companies the right to renegotiate longer hours and to pay less in overtime to employees who stay longer. The “right to disconnect” is ultimately a means of enshrining labour protections in a changed working environment, in which technology — especially smartphones and other personal devices — have become indispensable.

Some companies in France and elsewhere already have this rule in place, but Mettling insists that many more should. As he told Europe1 Radio: “Professionals who find the right balance between private and work life perform far better in their job than those who arrive shattered.”

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