"Self-Managed Annual Leave" Out of Reach for Small Businesses... 50% Say "Can't Use Freely"

Smaller Companies More Likely to Experience Restrictions on Annual Leave Usage

A survey revealed that 3 out of 10 office workers are unable to properly use their annual leave. There are concerns about whether the government's 'working hours reform plan,' which proposes expanding the labor time management unit from the existing weekly basis to monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, and annual units, will truly enable workers to work intensively and rest intensively as the authorities claim.

[Image source=Pixabay]

According to the civic group Workplace Bullying 119 on the 13th, there were 229 reports related to leave received last year. Among these, restrictions on annual leave accounted for the largest portion with 96 cases (41.9%). This was followed by sick leave restrictions (67 cases, 29.3%), illegal granting of annual leave (43 cases, 18.8%), and non-payment of annual leave allowances (30 cases, 13.1%).

The smaller the company size, the less likely employees were to use their annual leave. Workplace Bullying 119 commissioned the public opinion research firm Embrain Public to conduct a survey on the use of leave systems among 1,000 office workers from December 7 to 14 last year. The results showed that 30.1%, or about 3 out of 10 respondents, answered that they could not freely use their 'statutory paid leave.'

Specifically, 16.0% of private companies with 300 or more employees reported this, compared to 27.0% in companies with 30 to less than 300 employees, 36.8% in companies with 5 to less than 30 employees, and 49.4% in companies with fewer than 5 employees.

According to the 2021 Worker Leave Survey by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the annual leave utilization rate was only 71.6%.

Park Sung-woo, a labor attorney and special committee chair on overtime abuse at Workplace Bullying 119, criticized, “The government’s plan is a regression of the entire Republic of Korea to 20 years ago, even beyond the '52-hour weekly maximum system' implemented since 2004.” He added, “It seriously undermines workers’ health rights and work-life balance, aiming to create an overwork society and an overtime republic.”

The organization also emphasized that the statutory working hours are 40 hours per week, and including excessive labor such as workload surges, workers can use up to 52 hours. They stated, “Our Labor Standards Act essentially requires keeping the 40-hour workweek under normal circumstances,” and pointed out, “However, all aspects of the government’s plan assume that the statutory working hours are 52 hours per week.”