South Korea is proposing a 69-hour work week

South Koreans already toil greater than a lot of their abroad counterparts. They work a median of 1,915 hours per 12 months, in contrast with 1,791 hours for Individuals and 1,490 hours for the French, who’ve a 35-hour workweek, in keeping with figures from the Group for Financial Co-operation and Growth. The OECD common is 1,716 hours.

South Korea’s proposal comes because the four-day workweek positive aspects traction from Britain to California.

Bored with after-work emails and calls? In these international locations, they’re outlawed.

In a bid to sway public opinion, President Yoon Suk Yeol’s administration says some employees would possibly finally have extra free time beneath the brand new guidelines, as the federal government would additionally introduce a cap on the variety of working hours monthly, quarter or 12 months. There would even be restrictions on working greater than three 60-plus-hour weeks in a row. This implies four-day workweeks are a chance, Labor Minister Lee Jung-sik stated this week at a information convention.

The plan would let workers select how lengthy and once they work, the ministry stated.

“The present work-hour system doesn’t convey the more and more numerous and complex wants of employers and workers by limiting the alternatives of employees and corporations alike,” Lee stated in an announcement this week. “This doesn’t match international requirements that stress the best to decide on and the best to well being.”

The ministry additionally pointed to new necessities mandating a minimal 11-hour relaxation interval between shifts. Nonetheless, critics say that the brand new rule doesn’t bear in mind commutes, and after-work emails and textual content messages.

The proposal has sparked a backlash from employees who concern it can give employers authorized grounds to encourage grueling hours on busy weeks.

“They are saying that the full hours we work yearly will keep the identical or come down,” stated one 34-year-old employee at a Samsung affiliate, who spoke on the situation of anonymity as a result of they weren’t licensed by their employer to talk publicly. “However there’s all the time extra work to do. We would now see extra overwork-related deaths if there’s a 69-hour workweek.”

Minbyun, a attorneys’ group that has shut ties to the opposition, stated in an announcement this week that the plan doesn’t deal with issues ensuing from a protracted workweek, even when it caps hours on a quarterly or yearly foundation.

The federal government is overlooking that work-related accidents and deaths “have a tendency to extend when the workweek will not be restricted to beneath 52 hours,” the group stated, citing South Korean labor legal guidelines that take into account medical points that happen after a number of 60-hour workweeks to be work-related.

The federal government is looking for to submit the plan to parliament for approval by July, in keeping with the semiofficial Yonhap Information Company. However the Democratic Social gathering holds a parliamentary majority, which means it might block the proposed amendments.

Lengthy work hours have been cited as a significant motive that South Korea’s fertility fee is the world’s lowest, at 0.78, whereas its suicide fee is one of many world’s highest at 24.1 per each 100,000 folks, in keeping with the OECD.

The World Well being Group has linked lengthy working hours to elevated danger of stroke and coronary heart illness. “Working 55 hours or extra per week is a critical well being hazard,” a WHO official stated in 2021.

For some employees, the proposal rings hole.

“Working till 9 or 10 p.m. is regular for me,” stated an worker at an LG affiliate, who spoke on the situation of anonymity as a result of they weren’t licensed by their employer to talk publicly. “The 52-hour factor didn’t stop me from working longer hours. So once I see headlines mentioning the 69-hour workweek, I can’t relate. I’m working lengthy hours anyway.”