hankyoreh

Kim Myeong-hwan

“I will create 500,000 new jobs by reducing working hours.”

This was the declaration in January 2017 from Moon Jae-in, considered at the time to be the Democratic Party’s leading contender for the presidency. Pledging to become the “jobs president,” Moon stressed, “If we abide by the legal limit of 52 working hours per week, we can create 204,000 jobs – even including ones in exceptional business categories – and we can create another 300,000 jobs simply if workers use all of their vacation time.”

In addition to improving quality of life and allowing job-sharing through reduced working hours, his vision also included “changing quality of life that ranks in the lowest tier” and “allowing whole families to eat dinner and spend holidays together.” Have Moon’s rosy campaign pledges actually blossomed now that he has become president?

Meeting with the leaders of the five main political parties on Nov. 5 in a “permanent governance consultation group,” Moon agreed to an expansion in unit periods under the flexible working hour system, which currently has a maximum period of three months. The move drew an outcry from the labor community – as an expansion in flexible working hour system unit times means the opposite of reducing working hours. The result has been a deepening divide of conflict between the administration and ruling party on one side and the labor community and civil society on the other.

The “flexible working hour system” is actually one of several systems for flexible working hours, along with the elective, judged, and discretional working hour systems. As a system, it involves adjusting average working hours within the legal limits to increase times during specific periods of increased business and reduce them when less work is available. The business world has been calling for the unit period to be increased to over six months from its current three-month maximum to increase the scope of the system’s application.

As a basis for demanding increased flexible working hour times, the business community has pointed to the industry areas where work tends to be focused during certain times by nature. The demands have been led by IT companies preparing to launch new products and companies manufacturing appliances such as air conditioners that are subject to seasonal demand. The companies are asking for permission to assign more work to employees during the six months when air conditioner production is high in exchange for less work during the six months when it is not. The construction industry wants the ability to assign less work during the rainy season and winter – when conditions make outdoor work difficult – and more during periods of good weather.

The labor world’s focus is on what it sees as the inevitable outcome of extending unit times from three to over six months – namely an increase in South Korea’s already notoriously long working hours. Even under the current three-month flexible working hour system, employees can be assigned up to 64 hours a week; in theory, they could even be put to work without stopping for 24 hours straight one day per week.

If the unit time is increased to six months, the number of weeks when employees work 64 hours would increase to the equivalent of three months (13) – far in excess of the government’s standard for recognizing death by overwork in cases where an employee dies after working an average of over 60 hours a week for 12 weeks. Without regulations along European lines to ensure minimum consecutive rest hours, the expansion of unit times would merely foster “legalized death by overwork,” the labor community claims, arguing that the measure sends South Korea in the opposition direction from reducing working hours that are already the second-longest among OECD member countries after Mexico’s.

A second issue besides countering the trend of reduced working hours is the reduction in wages for employees at said workplaces. Even at 52 hours a week, employees subject to the current flexible working hour system are not receiving overtime pay for the 12 hours beyond the 40-hour limit. The loss stands to grow even larger as unit times increase. An analysis by the Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU) showed that a worker earning 10,000 won (US$8.84) per hour would suffer the loss of fully 7% of wages working flexible hours in units of six months to a year. The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) calculated a maximum loss amounting to 18% of wages.

The administration and ruling party have further fueled frictions with the labor community with their rush to expand the flexible working hour system – which critics have likened to a “tank filled with steam.” A National Assembly agreement to “establish improvement measures to the flexible working hour system by 2022” during the amendment of related legislation early this year was reversed for no obvious reason as politicians recently began pushing instead to expand the system.

With that expansion, they are poised to undercut the very aims of the 52-hour maximum workweek system – at a time when that system has not even been fully enforced due to a grace period on punishing violations. Even before the Economic, Social and Labor Council (ESLC) was established by the ruling and opposition parties as a body for social dialogue, politicians agreed to legislate an expansion of the flexible working hour system by the end of the year; now they face accusations of narrowing the gateway to “social dialogue” further by assigning a tight deadline to the ESLC and pressuring it to reach an agreement even before its launch.

“Politicians have been representing only the business world’s interests and baselessly demanding revisions without questioning the effects or consequences of the flexible working hour system,” said Lee Jo-eun, secretary of the committee of labor and society for the People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy (PSPD).

“This attitude of setting a deadline and insisting that the National Assembly will handle things if they can’t reach an agreement suggest they’re simply using the ESLC as a pretext,” Lee claimed.

Korea Labour and Society Institute director Roh Kwang-pyo said, “The administration and ruling party brought up expansions to the flexible working hour system as a way of quieting complaints from the business world, but their attitude has merely stoked labor-management conflicts and eroded trust in labor reforms.”

“If the labor world gets shut out just as social dialogue is really starting to happen, it will become even more difficult for KCTU to be a part of the dialogue,” Roh predicted.

For the labor world, the situation was seen as demanding action. KCTU vocally criticized the move in a Nov. 20 press conference in front of the Blue House on a vote to hold a general strike on Nov. 21.

“The administration and National Assembly are pushing to change labor law for the worse by expanding the flexible working hour system, approaching the labor world through confrontation and one-way traffic rather than respect and debate,” the organization said.

“The Liberty Korea Party (LKP) showed its true aims of changing labor for the worse when it proposed trilateral discussions with the ruling party and Moon administration. The onslaught from conservatives will only become more intense if the administration and ruling party turn their backs on workers,” it added.

While the key reason for the strike was originally a call to ratify International Labour Organization (ILO) core agreements, the issue of opposition to the flexible working hour system has become more central as the situation has developed.

The controversy over expanding unit hours under the flexible working hour system has also prompted some to go “back to basics” in consider the aims behind the 52-hour workweek limit’s adoption.

“System improvements must first be made to guarantee workers’ right to health by introducing a consecutive rest time system and to ensure that agreement on flexible working hours based on labor-management collective bargaining are guaranteed,” KCTU said in an issue paper published on Nov. 20. At the same time, the organization stressed that it was “time for a new approach to resting rights for workers, including laws against work on Sundays and holidays and introduction of the long two- to four-week annual holidays that are widespread in European countries.”

In particular, it called for consideration of ways of achieving fundamental progress for South Korean society rather than submitting to business world demands because of short-term economic conditions. To achieve this, KCTU suggested the proposal of labor-management-government open discussions, surveys of public opinion, and hearings with personal accounts of long working hours in various industries and the side effects of expanding the flexible working hour system.

KCTU plans to focus its energies on blocking expansion of the flexible working hour system within the ESLC’s working hour system improvement committee.

“In light of the large differences between labor and management on the flexible working hour system, reaching an agreement by the end of the year is effectively out of the question, yet politicians are trying to neutralize the social dialogue body and deal with things in a ‘rough and ready’ way,” said FKTU spokesperson Kang Hoon-joong.

“We intend to make the problems of expanding the flexible working hour system the focus of maximum public debate within the social dialogue framework,” Kang said.

By Park Ki-yong, Seoul correspondent, and Lee Ji-hae, staff reporter

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