Breaks provided for periods
Can’t seem to be able to post on that blog, so I’ll just trackback.
The frank mention of breaks provided for periods did crack me (and those students who knew this use of the word) up laughing. Having said that, the notion is not, perhaps, without merit.
The day off for periods is a legal requirement. In the companies that do give it – many just ignore the law, either by ignoring the legal vacation scheme or by lumping this day together with the unisex, cumulable, one-day-a-month day off [월차] – some may take it for its intended purpose, but my own experience as an employer is that they take is when they need a day off…
Actually, Korea’s 노동법 Labour Laws are very generous. Here’s the skinny [as of October 2004, when I finally dropped my copy of 노동법 in the skip. Every year between 1998 and 2004 I had my secretary get me a new copy, just to be on the safe side(*). The possibility the law’s changed for the “worse” is infinitely small]:
- one day a month, cumulable, for men and women, from the first month of employment
- one day a month, non cumulable, for women’s *condition*, from the first month of employment
- 10 days of annual paid leave for employees with one year behind their belt – that number can be reduced to 8/9 if attendance has been below a certain threshold; can’t remember how much, since we never had the case. From the second year of attendance onwards, you add one day per year, until you reach 21 days [I think]. After this, the company can decide to award you extra pay instead of increasing the number of days.
Example: an employee with 3 years in the company gets 12 days of yearly paid leave, 12 days of monthly leave, and if she’s a she, one day per month for periods pains. That’s 24/36 days off. An employee with 20 years in the company gets [at least] 21 +12 [+12 for a woman], ie 33/45. Not bad eh? Theoretically at least, because I haven’t met a single person employed in a Korean company who enjoyed these benefits. Sometimes I had to explain the law to people [they were surprised that the law is this generous], and they’d say “우리 회사엔 그런 게 없어요…”; There’s no such thing in our company. Like companies make their own laws. Or something…
OTOH, Koreans who worked for foreign companies? Sure! Especially – but not limited to – those that have a union. Any breach of the law can get reported, sued, etc… A little double-faced, but nothing new here…
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(*) The reason I kept up to snuff, more or less, on Korean Labour Laws is that I wanted to be able to give my employees everything they deserved, by law, but to be able also to say “there’s no such thing in the law” when they came to me with vague profiteering schemes, arguing “it’s like this in Korea”. Stangely enough, many of the employees I had would have preferred more cash and fewer days off. But there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in Hell it’d happen, especially with my last employer, a very Dutch company…
April 20th, 2006 at 7:42 am
And did you happen to know whether your employees (secretary) use to like you? Each time I hear of a good employer, it is never because he respects the law (well, who really does?). Koreans are so emotional, in my experience.
April 20th, 2006 at 10:52 am
Well experience taught me not to trust things like feelings in the workplace. Besides, an employer – even, or maybe especially, one who also draws a salary – will never be part of *their* team [and he better not be, after all]. My father in law told me a long time ago that I shouldn’t befriend employees, and should “acquire weight” – 무게를 잡아야 돼 – [and although he didn’t mean put on weight, this is what happened too
]. Not only I am – and always will be – a foreigner, but the goals of an employee and of a branch manager are quite different. Their own – far as I can tell – was to draw a salary, preferrably doing something interesting – and not too many hours; mine was to make this branch profitable. Fun was not part of the job description – but on the other hand I didn’t have to worry about how to make ends meet.
On the particular subject of secretaries, they usually like you when you leave them pretty much alone. When you start being demanding, your overall score starts to drop. So I never really cared about making the top-10 charts in the company. The P&L rather was where I focused my attention…