Many workers prefer fatter paychecks to more leisure time


The government’s latest drive to reduce working hours is facing reluctance from workers who fear an impact on their paychecks.

Yet, experts see it as inevitable that the country tackles the ingrained culture of long hours to boost productivity, improve workers’ quality of life and create new jobs.

“Long working hours have prevailed in Korea under consent of three parties ― management, labor and government, with the management bent on reducing costs, unions on fattening paychecks and the government on achieving growth targets,” said Park Tae-joo, a professor at the Employment and Labor Training Institute. “Now, the government wants to break it.”

The motive behind the government’s about-face appears to be employment, as the local economy creates fewer and fewer new jobs.

“We must think of ways to reduce working hours at large conglomerates and distribute quality jobs to more people,” President Lee Myung-bak said last week.

Shortened hours have many positive effects such as improving lifestyles, creating new jobs and boosting private consumption, he said.

His remarks sparked a flurry of steps by the Ministry of Labor and other related agencies.

They include a plan to regulate weekend and holiday work and the country’s first-ever rollback of exemptions to the labor hour rule currently in effect for 26 industries to just 10.

“Korean workers put in longer hours, but their productivity lags. This is because of our culture that evaluates an employee’s work based on hours put in rather than their performance,” Labor Minister Lee Chae-pil said.

In 2004, Korea introduced a 40-hour workweek rule and limited overtime to 12 hours per week. Still, many put in hours beyond the legal maximum of 52 hours a week, because of broad exemptions to the rule and a lack of guidelines on weekend and holiday work.

The country has the longest average working hours among members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Korean workers’ annual hours came in at 2,111 in 2010 against the organization’s average of 1,692.

Some workers see the move as only worker-friendly at surface level, as they lack effective measures to boost workers’ income to reflect the rising costs of living.

“It could threaten the livelihoods of many low income earners who are paid by the hour,” said Moon Yong-moon, labor union chief of Hyundai Motors, the country’s top automaker.

According to the government’s estimation, about 2.34 million workers receive the legal minimum wage which is set at 4,580 won ($4.3) an hour this year. Another 2 million workers are thought to be earning even less than that.

If a worker paid the minimum wage works 40 hours a week, he or she will earn 957,220 won a month.

Better-off workers like Moon and other autoworkers could also face a significant cut in their salaries, as compensations for extra work, including daily overtime, weekend and holiday duties, account for nearly 40 percent of their monthly income.

Park Jie-soon, professor of law at Korea University in Seoul who sits on the Korea Tripartite Commission, acknowledges the problems.

“In some sectors such as food and beverages, accommodations and retail, the recommended reduction in working hours could lead to problems such as depressed wages,” he said.

“It is essential that (the authorities) monitor those sectors continuously and study various measures to support them.”

Employers, for their part, fear a rise in labor costs at a time when they face a formidable challenge from their peers in cheap-labor countries such as China.

To adjust production volumes to fluctuating demands without extension of working hours, companies should be able to hire more during a boom time and then slim down in a downturn, but layoffs are almost impossible in the country’s rigid labor market, they say.

“Such a drastic reduction of working hours, with no regard to the reality, will cause serious unwanted impact on industries,” the Korea Federation of Employers said in a press statement.

By Lee Sun-young (milaya@heraldcorp.com)