69-Hour Workweek for Whom?
Written by Son, Jong-pil (Policy Research Team)
Translated by: Steven Lee(Translation Team)
In July 2021, Yoon Seok Yeol claimed that the workers should “work 120 hours a week if necessary, with a break after two weeks”, while answering a question regarding “the grievances of businesses including the 52-hour workweek and the minimum wage” during the interview with Maeil Business News.
Once he became the President of South Korea, Yoon turned these thoughts into a concrete plan with the new work hour reform by the Ministry of Labor. Also known as the “69-hour workweek”, the reform has been met with extremely negative reaction from the public. Yoon immediately ordered it to be amended, sending the Ministry into a shock as they seek measures to remedy the situation. The Ministry declared that the measure would be developed through dialogues with the young generations. However, the vast majority of workers, including the youths, are of the opinion that the reform is an “unjust law that promotes overworking”.
The labor community criticized the measure as entirely out of touch with reality, as workers who cannot exercise their legal rights can hardly expect to rest as long as they needed. Some criticized the bias in the policy favoring the capital, ignoring the voices of the workers themselves.
President Yoon’s sudden change of heart is almost childish. When the policy implemented under his orders ran into public opposition, he immediately declared that the work hours must not exceed 60 hours a week, as if he had nothing to do with the policy. What does that make all those who pushed for its implementation under at his say-so?
South Korea is notorious for its long work hours. According to the Korean Statistical Information Service, the mean annual work hours of Korean workers was at 1915 hours as of 2021, the highest among OECD nations. At first glance, a work-hard play-hard system might not appear problematic, but it is only surface-deep. Even now, most workers cannot use all their annual days off, and it is clear as day that Yoon’s measure will only lead to longer working hours. A recent survey revealed the shocking truth that 55% of workers in their 20s could spend fewer than 6 days off a year.
Throughout the industrialization process of the 1970s, the Korean government had taken away even the most basic rights of the workers by law. The labor force was exploited by 18 hours of work a day. The state power actively intervened in the employer-employee relation and turned a blind eye to the illegal practices of the capitalists. Long work hours and low wages ran rampant as the labor-intensive industries focused only on growths and exports. However, with the democratization of society, working conditions improved, albeit extremely slowly. The recent work hour reform is an attempt to reverse all this progress in a single blow, as an answer to the demands of the capital.
In the end it is a policy that represents the interest of the capitalists. From a global perspective, the Korean work hours are already very long, so it would not be feasible to formally extend them further. As a result, the government presented their flexibilization as a workaround. The government presented “mutual consent on working conditions”, but without a labor union’s power to defy the employer, this would obviously be a consent in name only. According to the information released by the Ministry of Labor last December, the union membership rate in Korea is only 14.2%, with 2.93 million members. It is only clear that working hours would increase under paper-thin consent in smaller, non-unionized workplaces. This increase in working hours serve only to increase the profit of capitalists. The availability of profit is limited under currently allowed working hours, and in the cutthroat competition between capitalists, securing additional working hours would be a godsend.
The recent work hour reform is only one of many ways towards a more business friendly society. To make the working hours more flexible and more rational is only a pretext for the exploitation of workers for cheaper wages. However, it would be difficult to return to the past. The workers have become wiser, and the people are not foolish enough to reverse the improvements in working conditions.