In
October 2020, the Korea Institute of Labor Safety and Health (KILSH) has
commemorated the 200th copy of Ilteo,
the monthly magazine. The Ilteo has covered workers’ stories and changes
related to long working hours, work intensity, night work, the Karoshi (death
from overwork), salary and working hours, and demands and actions to improve
the legal system. The 200th copy deals with issues, practices, and
problems that KILSH has identified.
Overwork, walking a tightrope between the life and
death
The
KILSH began the approach to the working hours from the Karoshi case and workplace
cases. We introduced 12-hour shift worker who was working for 64 hours per week
during night with only 4 days off for a year in the automobile factory. We
suggested statistics about a company’s case where 59 workers were diagnosed or
died from cerebrovascular
or cardiac disease. We also produced articles about a self-learning worksheets teacher who died
from stress from forced business practices and overwork, and a railway worker
who died from the accident caused by increased work time and work intensity due
to staff cuts. South Korea introduced 8 hours working legislation by the Labor Standard Act in
1953. The workweek has been shortened from 48 hours in 1953 to 44 hours in
1989, and to 40 hours in 2004. 40 hour workweek applied to large corporations
at first and extended to the companies with 5 workers and over in 2011.
Nevertheless, 40 hour workweek does not seem realistic to a lot of workers because
the law has many exceptions such as ‘special
cases concerning work hours and recess hours.’
We need to sleep at nighttime
We need to
sleep at nighttime. Except for those working in public sectors such as
hospitals, police stations or fire stations where should be open, there is no
job needed at night. It is known that working at night causes cardiac disease,
sleep disorder, digestive disorder, breast cancer, prostate cancer and
colorectal cancer. In the 30th issue, Ilteo published an article “The
ways to Workers’ safety and health movement’: On the four agenda”. Among them,
we suggested “Protecting lives from the shift working – abolishing the system
of working at night” as the first agenda.
“Abolishing night work can be the first step to save
workers’ lives from the shift working. It is just the minimal demand to protect
health and lives of workers, and does not guarantee workers’ health and quality
of life or damage profits of capital. In that sense, abolishing night work cannot
be the fundamental solution or a perfect alternative. However, it is surely an
important beginning. Specially, considering the manufacturing industry system
of Korea centered on complete automobile manufacturers and shipbuilding
industry, that is expected to have considerable impact. Furthermore, since
working at night has been expanded to services industry, abolishing night work
needs to be a struggle agenda against capital that tries to build 24 hour
working system.[1]
Half victory;
transit to two consecutive day shifts
There
were workers’ fights against night work. They demanded “two consecutive day
shifts without working time extension, wage cuts, or increased work intensity”,
and “Doowon Precision” realized it. Doowon started two consecutive shifts with 8
hour working time including lunch time, work from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., and work
from 4 p.m. to 12 a.m in 2010. Monthly pay system also has started. Since the change
of a work shift, workers’ health got better.
Two
surveys –one was after six months of change in shift work system and the other
a year and a half- showed that there were a lot of workers saying that they got
healthier and had better quality of life. The workers who answered that
“quality of sleep has been better after work shift changes” increased from 60.4%
after six months of change to 69.6% after one and a half year. Those who
answered that “work fatigue has been reduced due to working time reduction”
also increased 70% to 78%, and workers who said “I could do more house chores
after work” increased from 75.9% to 82.8%. These seemed to be positive changes
extended as time passes by.
The
representative complete automobile companies started two consecutive day shifts
since 2012. As mentioned above, the KILSH claimed work shifts without working
time extension, wage cuts or increasing work intensity. However, there were
wage reduction, and automation and expansion of irregular workers,
rearrangement of the line. Although it is difficult to suggest precisely, work
intensity had been increased.
The
Working Time Center covered the topic of the shift work changes of automobile
parts companies by the special articles of Ilteo
in Aug. 2015. Instead of work shifts without working time extension, complete
automobile manufacturers started actual increase of work intensity. It was a
question if parts suppliers could start the way complete automobile
manufacturers had. Since automobile parts suppliers already had considerable
work intensity, it was necessary to make a close check if the same way would
make adverse effects.
“It has been evaluated that work time reduction was not big enough because as the effect of reduction of night work was marginal and some companies started working on weekends. Also, work intensity increased or was expected along with work shift changes in some companies. There were even attempts to expand irregular employment, and labor union members resisted against wage reduction accordingly.
In this
situation, there is possibility that the change into two consecutive day shifts of automobile parts suppliers would
lead to trade-off between the change and several issues pertaining to wage,
work intensity and irregular job expansion. There is also possibility that the
company increases productions to maintain workers’ wage and tries to expand
irregular jobs, and such changes are made in each company separately.
Therefore, it was needed to check the situation of implementation of two
consecutive day shifts of automobile parts suppliers, and specially details of
their implementing processes.”
Transition
to two consecutive day shifts made positive effects such as working hour
reduction among automobile parts suppliers, too. Absolute working time
reduction was positive in itself, and it partly brought improvement of workers’
health. But attack from capital was harsh, too. They found excess rate and increased work
intensity, and consistently inculcated an ideology of ‘linkage between production
and wage’. It was not easy to take workers’ rights back by work shift changes.
Foundation of The
Working Time Center
Preparing
for commemorate the 10th anniversary of the KILSH in 2012, we
decided to found <The Working Time Center>. Since we recognized working
hours, working at nighttime, work intensity as major issues of the labor health
movements, we tried to make practical research and policy measures on the one
hand and tried to make practices and solidarity on the other hand. While belonging
to the KILSH, the center was open to anyone. Various people such as union
activists, academics (sociologists, occupational physicians and social welfare
researchers, etc.), NGO activists and students participated in the center. We
have carried out research on automobile parts suppliers’ shift working
mentioned above, published books such as 『Doctors who went inside a chimney』, 『Pain and Prejudice』 and 『Why have we endure such times?』, and conducted
policy research (the Industrial Accident Insurance Act research, the minimum
wage research, occupational mental illness research, and study of Karoshi
standard) and various field research (taxi drivers’ working conditions research
and job stress research of finance and services workers). We have discussed various
topics pertaining to working time through monthly open talks.
Making a right standard to approve the overwork
(death)
The
Working Time Center, conducted a project to make examples of a standard for overwork.
By reviewing court precedents and cases of the Occupational Disease
Adjudication Committee, we claimed to reduce working hours that is standard of
overwork and to suggest various qualitative standards of overwork. In Korea, a
worker who died from frequent drinking with his clients as part of business was
recognized as an occupational death in the Supreme Court 1991, and it was the
first approval of overwork death. As more similar cases approved, in 1995 the
Ministry of Employment and Labor included cerebrovascular and cardiac disease in
occupational diseases. In 2004, over 2,000 cases were approved as industrial
injury.
However,
there was a change in standard to approve the occupational disease since 2007.
Before 2007, workers were automatically approved as having occupational disease
if they break down from cerebral hemorrhage or myocardial infarction. However, the
event was not approved as an occupational disease if it was not related to the
work although it happens while working since 2007. As a result, the numbers of
the overwork death cases that were approved as the occupational disease
constantly decreased afterward. Since then, chronical overwork was defined as
working average 60 hours and more over 12 weeks, and average 52 hours and more
over 12 weeks in 2018.
It
is important to consider work intensity that means the amount of work in a unit
of time, job stress, and shift working in addition to work hours when deciding
overwork. If a diseases is not approved as the occupational disease, it is
difficult to find causes of and to prevent the disease. Therefore, it is
important to make standards and conduct research to make workers’ deaths from
overwork approved as the occupational diseases.
Still there are workplaces with overwork
The
form and content of labor have changed with the changes of technology and
industrial structure. In the circumstances of COVID-19, long-time work and
overwork of delivery workers have been major issues. Platform labor has been
excluded from the legal protective system that mainly target conventional labor
relations. Overwork problem of workers in the IT and game industries emerging
as major industries recently should be solved out too.
“There was an interesting question on
Netmarble (a game company) survey, which asked what the maximum hours that
workers stayed at the workplace without leaving was. Surprisingly, 30% of whole
respondents answered they had stayed over 36 hours. 40.1% of retirees and 21.4%
of current workers said so. Even when considering only current workers, one out
of five workers has experienced staying over 36 hours in the office without
leaving.”
Furthermore, bus drivers’ overwork is not a
major concern of our society although it is directly related to workers’ health
and citizens’ safety (line bus drivers are excluded from Special Cases concerning
Work Hours and Recess Hours on the Labor Standard Act, but drivers are still suffer
from overwork). Overwork and deaths from overwork of parcel delivery workers
have not been resolved, either.
Not just platform labor, IT and game industry
workers but conventional industry workers such as bus drivers, taxi drivers,
parcel postmen, health and medical workers, workers in small businesses’ still
suffer from long work hours and overwork. With technological development,
capital is controlling the work process in a way which workers’ work intensity
increases. Public sector workers have no public support. For example, taxi
drivers have the issue of ‘Sanabgeum’, the money they have to turn over taxi
company out of their daily earning, bus drivers have a system of low wage under
privatization, parcel postmen and health and medical workers have issues, too.
Discussion on the real problem of current issues is necessary.
Fight for working
time reduction and work intensity prevention is matter of workers’ survival and
health rights
The KILSH has constantly claimed that it is
problematic to think working hour reduction in terms of job creation. When two
consecutive day shifts were not regarded as health right-related issue, it
rather led to strengthening work intensity in order to meet the production. In
the past, complete automobile manufacturer workers could not prevent malformed consecutive
day shifts, automobile parts suppliers had to endure high work intensity. Now,
automobile parts suppliers’ workers remain powerless, so they do not even have
any work intensity to increase, which capital wants.
We should remember that labor safety and
health movement failed to accomplish working time reduction as workers’ rights
while productivity has developed. We should face that the structure in which
work intensity has increased without employment is reproduced. As has done so
far, we need to have workers’ safety and health as starting point and aim of
equal and free labor. Then, finally we can create world where workers’ health
and lives have priorities to profit.
What to do now
Labor flexibilization as well as work time
flexibilization have been intensified. This is related to appearance of
platform labor in the aspect of industrial structure. In the social aspect, discussion
about labor flexibilization become active again since telecommuting due to
COVID-19 has been expanded. Considering this situation, prospect of labor
safety and health movement and the Working Time Center is as follows.
The problem of long-time work to maintain living wage
caused by low wage structure has to be resolved. Excessive work has to be stopped
by evaluating the actual work intensity. Concrete tasks for this are as below.
Work at nighttime, shift work, and long-time work are
important issues we should constantly deal with. Low paid and (extra) short
time work, suicide from overwork and platform labor are major agenda we need to
deal with as new issues. In the COVID-19 situation, it is urgent issues to be
intervened to abolish the special
cases concerning work hours and recess hours (article 59 of the Labor Standard
Act) that allows long time work of health and medical workers and transportation
workers, and to change the
system to guarantee platform industry workers’ labor and health rights.
On these short and long-term tasks, we should
raise questions about the issues and continue to react to each case. Various
field research and struggle to resist against increasing work intensity so that
workers can take their rights back as owners of their own labor.
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