Supreme Court decides to drastically reduce amount of authorized overtime hours

A member of the Seoul Central Branch of the National Public Employees\' Labor Union Court Headquarters hangs a banner demanding normal payment of overtime wages in front of the Seoul Central District Court in Seocho-gu, Seoul, on Nov. 21.

The Supreme Court's Office of Court Administration has decided to drastically reduce the amount of “authorized overtime hours” as some local courts have run out of money to pay overtime. The legal overtime hours, which have been recognized for up to 57 hours a month, will be reduced to 25 hours. Employees protested by saying, “Does this mean that we cannot get paid even if we work?”

According to the coverage by Kyunghyang Shinmun on May 21, the Office of Court Administration posted a notice on the court's internal network the day before, stating that it would “reallocate the budget for overtime based on 25 hours per month from this month.” However, it said, "“Employees who actually worked the required overtime will be paid as much as possible.”

“Some courts made mistakes due to omissions and errors in the budget calculation process,” the Office of Court Administration explained, “and some courts were found to have overpaid overtime from January to April, resulting in a significant shortfall in the budget for May and coming months.”

This year, the amount of overtime compensation budgeted by courts was 49.2 billion won, about 1 billion more than last year. According to the Office of Court Administration, about 60 percent of the budget for overtime was allocated by the Ministry of Strategy and Finance, but the budget was mostly used up last month.

The Office of Court Administration is concerned that labor costs could fall short in the second half of the year at this rate.

As a desperate measure, the Office of Court Administration has come up with a plan to reduce the amount of authorized overtime hours. The Public Officials Remuneration Regulations, which is the Presidential Decree, allows public officials to work overtime for up to 57 hours per month. In the notice on its internal network, the Office of Court Administration said that in order to efficiently spend the limited budget, it is inevitable to adjust the amount of authorized overtime hours. Therefore, the total amount of overtime hours will be reduced to 25 hours per month.

This problem is also one aspect of the chronic budget shortage experienced by courts. Courts have reduced the total amount of overtime hours in the past due to a lack of budget, most of which were conducted in the second half of the year. It is unprecedented that a budget reallocation to be implemented in the first half of the year. Some point out that the budget for overtime pay has already hit rock bottom even though the budget has increased from last year, raising the question of poor budget execution.

Until last year, the Office of Court Administration provided budgets to each district court on a quarterly basis, but this year, it gave them discretion to execute a year's worth of budgets. “There were some aspects of the budget planning that went wrong,” said an official from the Office of Court Administration. “We'll see if we need to make adjustments in the future.” He also added, “We're not saying that we're not going to pay people who actually worked more than 25 hours. We will make sure that there's no damage to employees."

However, employees are protesting. On the court's internal network, there are complaints that “overtime should be paid normally” and “limiting it to 25 hours is problematic.” Jung Min-hyung, head of the Seoul Central Branch of the court headquarters of the Korean Government Employees' Union, said, “The courts never properly recognized the 57 overtime hours in the first place. The readjustment to 25 hours means that they will not give money."

※This article has undergone review by a professional translator after being translated by an AI translation tool.