VW to Switch Off BlackBerry Servers Outside Work Hours

Are you fed up with your Blackberry because it effectively puts you on call for your employer 24/7? Are you a slave to its blinking red light and the vibrating alarm that tells you you have a new email?

Well, if you are an employee at German car maker Volkswagen, you will now be officially released from the tyranny of the little electronic ball and chain in future, at least during after-work hours and at weekends.

The German carmaker has agreed to deactivate e-mails on staff Blackberry devices out of office hours to give them a break. Under an agreement with labor representatives, staff at Europe's biggest automaker will receive e-mails via Blackberry from half an hour before they start work until half an hour after they finish, and will be in blackout-mode the rest of the time, said a spokesman for VW.

"A deal has been reached" with labour representatives and the mighty IG Metall union under which the carmaker's server will no longer transmit emails to thousands of employees' company Blackberrys between 6:15 pm and 7:00 am, a spokesman told AFP.

"As a company, we need and make use of up-to-date means of communication. But we realise that a balance needs to be struck. We feel this deal strikes such a balance," he added.