"Are You Off on Labor Day?"... 60% of Non-Regular Workers Can't Take Paid Leave on 'Red Days'

"Smaller Workplaces Less Likely to Provide Paid Holidays on Public Holidays"

A survey revealed that 6 out of 10 non-regular workers do not properly receive paid holidays guaranteed by the Labor Standards Act.

The civic group Workplace Bullying 119 commissioned the public opinion research firm Global Research to conduct a survey from February 2 to 13 among 1,000 workers nationwide aged 19 and older, obtaining these results.

Photo by Jo Yongjun jun21@

According to the survey, 58.5% of non-regular workers answered "No" to the question "Can you take paid leave on public holidays (red-letter days)?" In contrast, only 18.2% of regular workers said they do not get paid leave on public holidays.

The smaller the workplace size, the higher the percentage of workers who cannot take paid leave on public holidays. Among workplaces with fewer than 5 employees, 58.9% said they cannot take leave on red-letter days; for 5 to fewer than 30 employees, 40.6%; for 30 to fewer than 300 employees, 23.0%; and for 300 or more employees, 18.6%.

Workplace Bullying 119 also disclosed actual cases. One person who contacted Workplace Bullying 119 via KakaoTalk complained, "They said that taking a day off on red-letter days like March 1st Movement Day and Liberation Day is treated as using annual leave." Another person said, "Although I have 15 days of annual leave per year, red-letter days such as Labor Day or substitute holidays are used as common annual leave." They reported that the employer only allows the remaining days to be used as annual leave.

Workplace Bullying 119 stated, "As wage disparities by company size continue to deepen, the right to rest for workers in small-scale workplaces is being rapidly deprived," and added, "The government and political circles must promptly expand the scope of the Labor Standards Act related to the right to rest, actively supervise labor practices, and punish employers who violate the law."