Prawo do bycia offline jako podstawowe prawo pracownika

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the associated possibilities for the employers to order employees to perform their work remotely has caused the widespread perception of the employee’s right to be offline outside its working hours (also referred to as a “right to disconnect”) as a fundamental right. This article contains a synthetic analysis of the institution of remote working as the main source of threat to employees’ rights as well as considerations with regard to proposed solutions aimed at protecting the employee against such threat. On the one hand, remote work has a protective function being instrumental in safeguarding the continuity of businesses and the  employee’s workplace despite the pandemic, but on the other hand, it significantly interferes with the private sphere and may lead to violations of the regulations on working time. The European Parliament’s proposals on the right to be offline should be assessed positively, although they undoubtedly only guarantee an absolute minimum level of protection. The analysis was carried out following the formal dogmatic method also taking into account comparative tools.