For Some Even Labor Day Holiday and Pay Slips Are a Luxury: K-Labor Status System Divided by Size of Workplace

About half of the employees working for private companies hiring fewer than thirty workers are not likely to be ensured proper paid leaves, holidays, and sick leaves. Companies with fewer than thirty employees were more likely to fail to fulfill their obligation to provide employment insurance, to sign labor contracts, and to provide pay slips.

On May 1, the Kyunghyang Shinmun re-analyzed the results of the Gapjil 119 2023 Q1 Employee Awareness Survey along with Gapjil 119, Finance & Service Ubuntu Fund, and the polling firm Embrain Public. They reviewed the answers based on whether the workplaces had more or less than thirty permanent employees, since thirty was the general standard for determining small and medium-sized workplaces.

The latest survey gathered responses from a thousand employees and adjusted the distribution to fit reality according to various conditions, such as the size of the workplace based on the Economically Active Population Survey. Employees working in companies with fewer than thirty employees accounted for 41.3% of the respondents with 413 (161 worked in workplaces with fewer than five workers, and 252 worked in worksites with 5-29 employees). The number of respondents who worked in workplaces that hired 30-299 employees recorded 254, while 195 worked for companies with three hundred or more employees, 124 worked in public agencies, and fourteen were categorized as others including special forms of employment. The survey was conducted from March 3-10 and had a confidence level of 95% with a ±3.1% margin of error.

“There’s No Such Thing” as Paid Leave, Sick Leave, Even Holidays

Among the employees working in workplaces with fewer than thirty employees, 41.4% answered that they could not freely go on leave. The figure was 45.3% for people working in worksites with fewer than five employees, and 38.9% for those working in workplaces with 5-29 employees. According to the Labor Standard Act, workplaces hiring five or more permanent employees must provide workers paid leave. But it turns out that four in ten workers working in workplaces with 5-29 employees, which have the legal obligation to provide paid leave, were not guaranteed their leave.

The paid leaves for traditional holidays and holidays, which were applied to workplaces with five or more employees beginning 2022, were not properly ensured, either. Among employees of workplaces with fewer than thirty employees, 39.5% said they could not freely take a break from work on traditional holidays and holidays.

Workers in workplaces with fewer than thirty employees were not able to properly go on leave because of a rigid organizational culture and work force issues. When asked the reason they were unable to freely go on leave (multiple answers possible), 20.3% of workers in workplaces with fewer than thirty employees said, it was because of the “organizational culture, which made it hard to go on leave.”

Employment Insurance, Pay Slips… Companies Don’t Even Keep Existing Laws

Many workplaces with fewer than thirty employees failed to abide by basic labor practices, such as provide social insurance (national pension, health insurance, employment insurance), sign labor contracts, and provide a pay slip or a document stating the components of one’s earnings.

When asked if they subscribed to social insurance, 34.6% of employees in workplaces with fewer than thirty employees answered that they did not subscribe to the National Pension Plan for corporations, 31.2% said they had no health insurance (corporation subscription), and 31.5% said they did not have employment insurance. In the case of labor contracts, 22.0% of workers in workplaces with fewer than thirty employees answered that they did not sign any contract. But when it came to workplaces with 30-299 employees, only 5.9% of workers said they did not sign a labor contract. The figure was even smaller, only 3.6%, for workers in workplaces with over three hundred employees.

“Rights to Everyone” How to End the K-Labor Status System

Labor argues that the Labor Standard Act, which currently doesn’t apply to workplaces employing fewer than five employees, should be enforced in all worksites. All workplaces should be subject to the labor act in order to more effectively force small and medium-sized workplaces to abide by the law.

Kwon Doo-seob (attorney), head of Gapjil 119 said, “We can protect workers based on two axes, the Labor Standard Act and the collective agreement of labor unions. The smaller the workplace, the less likely it will have a labor union and the harder to apply the law.” He further said, “The need for protection is great, but we are excluding them from receiving the protection of the law, not to mention the protection from a collective agreement.” Only 0.2% of workplaces with fewer than thirty employees had labor unions.