Recently, there have been amendments of Labor Standards Act (hereafter referred to as the “Act”) in Korea, so many workers are likely to experience changes. I’m going to serially post on the amendments of the Act, and in this first posting, I’d discuss the change of the Article on annual paid leave. Please note that the annual paid leave shall be only applied to the workplaces which have not less than 5 workers.  

The changed Articles will be applied from May 29, 2018, and it will be more favorable to the workers who have worked for less than a year and who have been on childcare leave.  

First, let’s look into the change of annual leave for the first year worker. The existing Article of the Act to be removed is as follows;

Article 60 (Annual Paid Leave)

(3)  Where an employer grants any worker a paid leave for the latter’s first year of work, the former shall grant the latter a paid leave of 15 days, including the paid-leave referred to in paragraph (2), and, if the latter has already taken the paid-leave provided for in paragraph (2), shall deduct the number of days of such paid-leave from the said 15 days.

According to the third paragraph of the Article 60 as above, if the first year worker has taken all the annual paid leave given as a result of continuous working every month, he or she will have only 15 annual paid leave for the first two years. This might deprive the worker of the opportunity to take an enough rest from the work. Therefore, the paragraph of the Article has been determined to be removed.

Then what change, actually, the amendment will bring? As the amendment will be retroactively applied by one year, the amendment will cover the worker who entered the workplace after May 29, 2017. The worker starting work after May 29, 2017 is given 11 annual paid leaves for the first year and will take also 15 annual paid leaves for the second year without any deduction.

Second, I’d like to mention the amendment of the annual leave to be applied to the workers having been on childcare leave. The paragraphs of the Article on giving annual leave are as follows;

Article 60 (Annual Paid Leave)

(1)  Every employer shall grant any worker who has worked not less than 80 percent of one year a paid leave of 15 days.

(2)  Every employer shall grant any worker who has continuously worked for less than one year or who has worked less than 80 percentage of one year one paid-leave day for each month during which he/she has continuously worked.

(6)  In applying paragraphs (1) through (3), any of the following periods shall be deemed the period of attendance at work

Currently, the childcare leave is not regarded as the period of attendance at work. However, due to the amendment, childcare leave will be deemed to be workdays, so the workers having childcare leave will not be disadvantaged when counting the future annual paid leave. The amendment will be applied to those who will request childcare leave from May 29, 2018.   

If you have any further inquiries, please request a consultation (https://lawyerhwang.com/consultation/). My office is located near Seoul District Court and Gyodae station in Seoul.

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