More than Half of Office Workers Say "52 Hours a Week? 48 Hours Is Appropriate... Overtime Should Be Limited to 2 Hours"

Workplace Gapjil 119 Survey... "Working Hours Limit Should Be Reduced"
36% of Employees Suffer from Overtime Work

Four out of ten office workers believe that the maximum weekly working hours, including overtime, should be reduced from 52 hours to 48 hours. More than half also responded that daily overtime should be limited to 2 hours.

On the 9th, Workplace Bullying 119 announced that it commissioned Global Research to survey 1,000 office workers from February 2 to 13 on the "appropriate maximum weekly working hours."

The survey results showed that "48 hours" was the highest at 42.5%, followed by "the current standard (52 hours per week)" at 35.2%. Only 22.3% responded that the working hours limit should be increased.

Regarding the appropriate maximum daily working hours, assuming 8 hours as the basic working time per day, "2 hours (total 10 hours)" was the highest at 53.6%. However, the current Labor Standards Act does not set a limit on daily overtime or total daily working hours.

Additionally, the survey revealed that many office workers suffer from overtime such as early arrival, late-night work, and weekend work. 36.3% of office workers responded that they are working overtime, and among the respondents, 25.4% reported that their overtime exceeded 12 hours.

Workplace Bullying 119 explained, "It is common for workers to exceed the current maximum weekly working hours of 52 hours." In fact, cases reported to the organization include situations where superiors forced employees to work late nights and work more than 60 hours per week for about two months.

There were also reports of workers suffering from extended working hours without overtime pay due to the comprehensive wage system. The comprehensive wage system is a system where, when it is difficult to calculate additional work allowances, a fixed portion is included in the salary in advance and paid as a fixed wage regardless of overtime hours. However, some companies abuse this system by assigning excessive workloads that force extended working hours and do not acknowledge the overtime itself.

In this regard, 7 out of 10 respondents (71%) among all office workers answered that "comprehensive wage contracts should be completely banned."

Park Sung-woo, a labor attorney at Workplace Bullying 119, said, "It is urgent to amend the law to reduce the weekly working hour limit to 48 hours in line with international standards, to set a daily working hour limit which is practically absent only in Korea, and to ban comprehensive wage contracts, which are the main cause of long hours of unpaid labor." In fact, related legislation was proposed several times in the 21st National Assembly but failed to pass.