Since we were supposed to answer the questions before we read the material, I think most of the answers were based on the fact that it is an unreasonable demand and not necessarily illegal. My original answer was "no" to both questions. After reading the material, I understand that something that is "unfair" is not necessarily "illegal"
Questions I would ask:
What is the company policy? Perhaps the demands like these are in the Employee Handbook and the Director of the department just needs a friendly reminder of such policy.
What are the repercussions of stressing such a policy?
(a) Salaries will be affected. When you demand an employee to purchase an item and pay for the service, you are in essence, lowering their salary. This product is being purchased for the productivity of the company but the employees are not benefiting from that success. What kind of a message will that send to the employees? Employee morale is bound to decrease.
(b) Employees will be required to be available 24/7. This not only poses a risk to the work/life balance issue but also to the salary issue. When an employee answers an inquiry beyond their eight hour work day, is he/she being compensated for such time? If not, then we have the employee morale issue at hand. Like the course material says: "Even when there are no legal limits, human resources professional must always remind management that the impact of taking certain actions can also cause productivity losses, and that, too, can lead to a loss at the bottom line."