60% of Workers See Family Care Leave as 'Pie in the Sky'... "Effectiveness Must Be Ensured"

Workplace Gapjil 119 Vacation and Leave Survey... "More Difficult for Non-Regular and Low-Wage Workers"

Six out of ten office workers are unable to freely use family care leave or take a leave of absence.

[Image source=Yonhap News]

On the 12th, the civic group Workplace Bullying 119 commissioned the public opinion research firm Global Research to conduct an online survey from February 2 to 13 targeting 1,000 office workers aged 19 and older. The results revealed that 59% of respondents said they could not freely use family care leave or take a leave of absence even if they had family members to care for due to illness, accidents, or old age.

The less stable the working environment or the lower the salary, the less likely workers were able to properly use leave or take a leave of absence. Among regular employees, 51.3% reported difficulties in using family care leave or taking leave, while 70.5% of non-regular employees said they could not freely use such leave. Among respondents earning less than 1.5 million KRW per month, 73.9% said they could not freely use family care leave or leave of absence. In contrast, only 40.7% of those earning more than 5 million KRW gave the same response.

Public institutions allowed relatively freer use compared to private companies. Among public institution employees, 38.2% said it was difficult to use such leave, but in private companies, the smaller the workforce, the higher the percentage of respondents who found it difficult to use leave. By workplace size, 41.6% of those in workplaces with 300 or more employees, 57.9% in workplaces with 30 to fewer than 300 employees, 66.9% in workplaces with 5 to fewer than 30 employees, and 72.1% of employees in workplaces with fewer than 5 employees said they had difficulty freely using leave.

Even in public institutions where leave is relatively free, there were cases where employees were notified of 'usage not allowed' only after 100 days from the application. Employee A at a public institution applied for family care leave last July because his mother in her 70s had a level 3 physical disability and chronic illness. However, the employer notified him after 100 days that the leave was not allowed, citing reasons such as "the leave would cause significant disruption to normal business operations." A claimed that during the employer’s notification, he was told things like "a level 3 disability is not a severe disability" and "there is also the option of hiring a caregiver by paying money among siblings."

Kim Hyun-geun, a labor attorney at Workplace Bullying 119, said, "Although the family care leave system has been in place for over 10 years and current law does not even require employers to pay wages during this leave, the difficulty in utilizing it clearly reflects employers’ attitudes toward 'work-life balance' and 'work-family balance.'” He added, “It is urgent to raise social awareness of the value of caregiving and to ensure the effectiveness of the system.”