Brazil Rules Overtime Owed for Answering Emails

Over... time? What is this "overtime" you speak of?

In case you needed another reason to move to Brazil beyond the beaches, music, good-looking people, and meat-obsessed diet, the Brazilian government has passed a law that allows workers to ask their employers for overtime if they answer work-related emails on their smartphones after their day is done. Brazil's left-leaning government drew up the law, which says that emails are the equivalent of orders from a boss, and as such, responding to them ought to count as time worked. (Try telling that to, well, just about any private-sector employer on this side of the Panama Canal. Go ahead. We dare you.) Anyhow, the move toward less connectivity has also been adopted by some of the larger German companies. Volkswagen has put an end to the practice of using BlackBerrys after office hours, and telecom giant Deutsche Telekom and manufacturer Henkel have both introduced restrictions to cut back on the hours and frequency of emailing.