With all the arguments and complaints, but anyway, the ’52-hour workweek’, strictly speaking, the ’40-hour workweek with the maximum of 52-hour system’ started in 2018 for the public institutions, and workplaces with 300 or more employees, and will apply to all workplaces from July 2021. Of course, there is still a lot of backlashes. There have been continuous attempts to suspend or avoid the 52-hour workweek on the excuse of the ‘long-term recession’ until 2019, and the economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic since 2020. Paradoxically, the broadcasting industries including the media that intensively reports and delivers such news on the working hour regulation, are not free from the problem of long working hours.
Anyway, the broadcast industry was an area that had little to do with whether the ’68-hour week system’ or the ’52-hour week system’ was implemented. This is because, before July 2019, ‘broadcasting’ and ‘production and distribution of video and audio recordings’ (broadcast program production) were listed in the 26 industries designated as exemptions from working hour regulation under the Labor Standards Act. Due to the nature of the ‘broadcasting industry’, it was considered to be impossible to regulate working hours uniformly in this industry. The employers were legally able to have workers work all night long. Workers could not stand against overwork and night work, because that was totally legal.
However, with the revision of the Labor Standards Act in 2018, the number of exempted industries from working hour regulation was drastically reduced from 26 to 5. At the same time, the ‘broadcasting industry’ and ‘video/audio record production and distribution business’ were also excluded from the exemptions, and working hour regulation, which had not been applied to them for a long time, began to apply to the broadcasting industry in 2019.
The man says “This is the Korean style”. It is from the <Gimlet> comics online.
Broadcasters and outsourced producers thought about how to deal with this “emergency situation”. And someone came up with another ‘trick’ after carefully examining the revised Act. This resulted in the active use of the ‘flexible working hour system’ which is based on three months unit for calculation of working hours. JTBC’s trick, recently raised by the Hanbit Media Labor Human Rights Center, is the abuse of this ‘flexible working time system’. When they hire broadcast workers, they say, “We will keep the 52-hour workweek for the filming work.” However, the contract is not written on the spot. This is because the bad custom has been prevalent in the broadcasting industry, which is writing contracts only after starting work on the excuse that they are too busy for filming. It’s not until the workers sign the contract, they find something strange. The ’52-hour week system’, which was so widely believed by the workers, was actually a flexible working hour system that means an average of 52 hours a week in 3 months (12 weeks), so it was specified as ‘624 hours for 3 months’. There was no limitation for daily or weekly working hours. Travel time was not included in working time. The only provision is that additional payments will be paid if more than 624 hours have been worked after 3 months of work.
This is clearly a violation of the Labor Standards Act. Although the Act states that a flexible working hour system can be implemented in a three-month period, a written agreement with the employee representative is required. Moreover, even with these provisions, JTBC is using a “freelance service contract” rather than a labor contract to avoid legal responsibility.
To respond to this accusation, JTBC sent an official letter to the Hanbit Media Labor Human Rights Center and replied that all their TV shows productions are applying these provisions. At the same time, they claimed that other broadcasters have not even implemented the 52-hour week system like JTBC.
JTBC’s response is never desirable. However, it is a bitter reality that their claims are partly true. As JTBC said, many broadcasters just ignore the 52-hour workweek. Most of the broadcasting staff are actually being treated and working like employed workers, but instead of recognizing them as employees, the companies continue to use freelance service contracts that treat them as nominal “self-employed individuals.” Of course, there is no explicit provision for working hours on the contracts. If JTBC confuses workers with a trick that abuses the Labor Standards Act, the other broadcasters continue to have workers work long hours as before, as if they had nothing to do with the full implementation of the 52-hour workweek or the exclusion from the exemption.
For now, main terrestrial broadcasters continue to work to deal with the working hours problem. Since June 2019, the three terrestrial broadcasters KBS, MBC, and SBS have participated in a four-party panel that focuses on drafting standard labor contracts, preparing standard wage standards, and observing working hours under the Labor Standards Act, which is a joint meeting of the <Korean Drama Producers Association>, an alliance of outsourced drama producers, the <Hope Solidarity Broadcasting Staff Branch>, a union of broadcasting staff that was first formed in 2018, and <Korean Federation of Press Unions>. However, there is still no sign of an agreement on various matters including the standard labor contract, which should have been implemented in 2019, until the end of 2020, about a year and a half after the establishment of the panel. Broadcasters and outsourced producers continue to refuse to implement the 52-hour week system at the program production site on the basis that the agreement is still in progress. As mentioned earlier, the 52-hour workweek system is about to be fully implemented at all workplaces with five or more employees from July 2021, but it is unclear whether the agreement of the four-party council will be finished by July of this year. Although KBS and MBC take pride in their being ‘public broadcasting’, they are not actively expressing their opinion or taking steps for change in the issue of workers’ rights who make their own programs.
The bigger problem is that the poor situation of broadcasting labor is not only confined to broadcasting industries, but is gradually spreading to other video fields. Web dramas released through Naver TV and YouTube have not been free from labor problems for a long time, and even broadcast works through global OTTs such as Netflix do not comply with the ‘global standard’ in terms of working conditions.
How long do we have to stand still and watch the brutality of these broadcasters using ‘freelancers in name only’ to push workers into abuse? Although there was a limitation of not acknowledging supervisor-level/team leader-level staff as workers, the Ministry of Employment and Labor has already acknowledged many of the broadcast staff at the drama production site as workers who should be protected by Labor laws in 2018 and 2019. A number of legal cases for some individual broadcasting workers’ confirmation of worker status have been won since the 2000s. In spite of these cases, broadcasters and outsourced production companies are still completely immovable.
Although it was very late, in December 2020, the Korea Communications Commission (KCC) inserted ‘improving the treatment of non-regular workers’ as a condition of re-licensing terrestrial broadcasters, and for the first time inserted an item about the working conditions of broadcasting workers into the criteria for evaluating broadcasters. Now it’s time to pay attention to working hours as well. For this to happen, active movements and continuous monitoring of NGO or labor unions such as the Hanbit Media Labor Human Rights Center or the Broadcasting Staff Branch of the Hope Solidarity Union, and improvement of on-site work culture must be accompanied. Also, the KCC should use its powers rightfully because they can exercise enormous public power in the broadcasting field. At the same time, there is a need for cooperation between ministries related to broadcasting labor, such as the Ministry of Employment and Labor, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, and the Korea Creative Content Agency to solve the serious problems including night and long hours work. Only with these efforts in many ways, ’52-hour workweek’ which the labor unions have struggled for a long time can be finally settled in the broadcasting industries.
Comments