Too long or too short working hours: Labor reform without laborers

Cheonghee Yu

Activist, Korean Institute of Labor Safety and Health

February 2023

The words ‘flexibility’ and ‘autonomy’ have positive meanings compared to ‘inflexibility’ or ‘heteronomy.’ However, the meaning of these words changes if you consider whose flexibility and whose autonomy they pertain to. The labor flexibility policy which South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol has been insisting on since he was a presidential candidate, along with the announcements of the Ministry of Employment and Labor, and the recommendations of the Future Labor Research Council, all contain the demands of companies that increase or reduce working hours “autonomously” as much as they want. Note that the Future Labor Research Council is a thinktank launched by the Yoon administration for purpose of making recommendations to reform the labor market, including working hour regulations.

South Korea has a law that limits working hours, but previous administrations have made numerous exceptions to allow long working hours. This is the case with special overtime work (which is not special), and a 60-hour work week at workplaces with less than 30 employees. On the other hand, very short-time work has steadily increased over the past decade. There is no ‘autonomous’ right of workers to determine their own working hours in the labor reform by President Yoon’s government. The policy only aims to increase the management of overtime units from weekly to monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, and annual units, and to help companies decide working hours more freely and autonomously through a work hour savings account system.

Making exceptions standard: paving the way for long hours of work

The previous administration expanded the scope of “special circumstances” that can be approved under the Enforcement Rules of the Labor Standards Act as a “complementary measure” to limit one-week extended work hours to 12 hours. Two special circumstances were added: 1) “unusual increase in workload” and 2) “in cases that cause significant disruption or damage to the business if not resolved within a short period of time.” In addition, the Yoon administration extended the special extended work period to 180 days for all manufacturing industries, including overseas construction and shipbuilding. It makes sense to recruit more workers if additional work is needed for 90 days or more than 180 days. However, South Korean companies encourage current workers to overwork instead of hiring more workers.

In October of last year, a female worker at the SPL plant of an SPC affiliate was killed in an accident while working the night shift. The plant, which operates day and night shifts, had been running the factory with overtime. In 2022, they were even operating using special overtime work. Kang Kyu-hyung, chairman of the SPL branch of the Korean Chemical, Textile & Food Workers’ Union, said, “After the labor union (the Korean Trade Union Confederation) agreed, the special overtime was signed by each worker, but it was virtually impossible for an individual worker to refuse working overtime.” This is the truth of “Labor-Management Autonomy.” This factory is not the only workplace where night work is still being done frequently. Is it really labor reform if there are no restrictions on night work, and working hours are extended by allowing special overtime work to more industries?

In addition, the government allows workplaces with less than 30 employees to work up to 60 hours a week. These workplaces had been allowed up to 60 hours of work by adding 8 hours to 52 hours a week as an “exception.” This exception application was scheduled to be sunsetted at the end of December last year. However, the Ministry of Economy and Finance, the Ministry of Employment and Labor, and the Minister of SMEs and Startups gathered together to make a “public appeal” to extend the sunset period. When the extension bill failed to pass, the government announced a one-year grace period in 2023 to suspend the penalties. In other words, the Ministry of Employment and Labor has declared that it will not abide by existing laws. Isn’t it as if the government is confessing that it has not provided the necessary supervision with the aim of reducing working hours so far? Is a one-year moratorium really a moratorium? Would not they extend the grace period after a year? What has been clearly confirmed is that the Yoon administration’s “reform” is “reform” for capital and companies, and there is no place for workers’ health.

Irregular work time in the IT industry as a result of worker-management autonomy?

In many TV dramas, workers in the information technology (IT) industry appear with tired faces after working all night. We know that this is never a laughing matter. Working long hours is problematic, but working irregular hours and unpredictable hours is particularly bad for your health. After four workers in the game industry took their own lives or died suddenly in 2016, the problem of overwork in the IT industry, including the game industry, was brought to the forefront. ‘Crunch Mode,’ which means that one works overnight for a certain period ahead of the game release, is well-known.

However, the working conditions of IT workers have not improved. Citing a survey of IT workers in Seongnam, Kim Jong-jin, chairman of the Union Center, said, “The crunch mode, which is high-intensity labor at IT workplaces, was experienced by 51% of respondents, and the average number of days of crunch mode was 34 days (18.3% for 2 months or more, 13.5% for 3 months or more).” He also pointed out that “4 out of 10 IT workplaces (38.7%) still implement the blanket wage system.” Note that the blanket wage system does not pay salaries based on actual working hours, but instead uses a fixed salary regardless of how much overtime is worked.

IT workers are also aware of the problem of exploitative labor. The IT Committee of the Korean Chemical, Textile & Food Workers’ Union presented the results of a survey of IT workers. According to the survey, more than 70% of the respondents said that the maximum legal working hours, which is currently 52 hours, should be reduced, and more than 90% opposed the current working hour policy (driven by Yoon’s government) that abolishes the maximum working hour cap and allows overtime for a month to be used for a week. There was also high level of criticism against the blanket wage system, and more than 95% of the respondents said this system should be abolished since it results in long working hours and does not recognize overtime work.

The government also recognizes the problems of the blanket wage system and has even mentioned abolishing it. However, instead of abolishing the system, the government just keeps saying that it will strengthen supervision of labor. The IT Committee of the Seoul Metropolitan Branch under Korean Chemical, Textile & Food Workers’ Union (KCTF) urged the government to “stop attempting to expand a crunch mode to all industries” after the Future Labor Research Council announced its recommendation. KCTF pinpointed the problems of the Yoon administration’s labor reforms accurately. It is more urgent to make a strong regulation, so that workers who are already overworked could work proper working hours instead of leaving the current problems to labor-management autonomy.

The dangers of ultra-short-term jobs

Long working hours are not the only problem. Excessively short working hours also destabilize workers’ lives and health. Workers with an average of less than 15 hours of work per week averaged over four weeks are not guaranteed weekly holidays, annual paid leave, or severance pay. They are also not covered by the Fixed-Term Act. The number of after-school art instructors, platform workers, freelancers, and visiting workers has recently skyrocketed. These very short time workers are in an economically difficult situation because they are not sufficiently compensated for their salaries and benefits. As a result, many of them suffer from overwork due to having multiple jobs. Since they work in one place for a short time, vacations or holidays are not properly guaranteed, which can cause health problems. The number of very short time workers in South Korea surged during the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching 1.8 million in 2022.

Recently, the Dong-gu Office in the city of Ulsan introduced a “minimum living working hours guarantee” which changed the working hours of 53 very short time workers employed in the district office to 15 hours a week and provided them with weekly holiday allowances, annual leave, four major insurances, and severance pay. It was an attempt to “resolve inequality and turn unstable jobs into good jobs.” The task that government should do is not to increase very short time jobs in public sector pre-emptively, but to create jobs with enough working hours that allow workers to make a living. It is necessary to continue to develop and expand and include new attempts nationwide for South Korean workers.

Appropriate working hours for “workers”

The government talks as if the future labor market will allow employers and workers to set their own working hours. However, we already know that for workers in workplaces without labor unions and temporary or non-regular workers with unstable employment, the word “autonomy” means that they should follow what employers decide. If the presence of labor unions affects working conditions as the government says it does, then workers at workplaces without labor unions also need minimum regulations to ensure proper working hours and appropriate wage levels. They include restrictions on working hours that the government attempts to neutralize, abolition of discriminatory provisions that lead to ultra-short hours, and cracking down on blanket wage schemes that have no legal basis.