Weekly holiday pay is paid in accordance with the Labor Standards Act, which requires employers to guarantee workers at least one paid holiday per week. If an employee works more than 15 hours a week, he or she will receive 6 days’ wages even if they work 5 days. This is why the business community calculates the effective minimum wage for next year as 11,832 won (based on actual working hours of 174 hours per month).
Applying this standard, Korea’s minimum wage exceeded 10,000 won at 10,030 won in 2019, followed by 10,318 won in 2020, 10,474 won in 2021, 10,980 won in 2022, 11,555 won in 2023, and 11,843 won in 2024. The average hourly minimum wage in all regions in Japan is ▲ 874 yen in 2019 ▲ 901 yen in 2020 ▲ 902 yen in 2021 ▲ 930 yen in 2022 ▲ 961 yen in 2023.
Among major countries, Korea, Switzerland, Taiwan, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, and Turkey are among the countries that include weekly holiday pay when determining the monthly minimum wage. From the workers’ point of view, even though they work 5 days, they live 7 days a week. Therefore, in most countries, long-term, low-wage workers are paid higher than the minimum wage amount.
If so, who pays the minimum wage? In the case of Japan, foreign workers are the target. Certified Labor Attorney Nam Dong-hee explained on the 23rd, “In Japan, most of the workers subject to the minimum wage are foreign workers, and the wage and employment market is formed so that natives receive wages 30 to 40% higher than the minimum wage.” Korea’s high wage level, which reflects weekly holiday pay, is a factor that attracts workers from Southeast Asian countries메이저사이트.
Labor Attorney Nam pointed out, “Japan is securing competitiveness in attracting foreign workers by extending the period of stay or allowing family members to stay in addition to the monthly salary. Foreign workers are ‘complementary workers’ in nature, and Koreans and foreigners compete for jobs that pay the same salary in Korea. This means that the perception that foreign workers are taking the jobs of low-wage workers is growing stronger. Conversely, from the standpoint of manufacturers, instead of closing businesses that cannot afford the labor costs of local workers, the choice to continue management by finding the last alternative, foreign workers, becomes farther away.
In the service industry, where the utilization of foreign workers is slow, side effects of weekly allowances are also appearing. A typical example is the prevalence of ‘split part-time jobs’ that employ less than 15 hours per week. This is the result of self-employed people who were reported for violating the Labor Standards Act because they paid the minimum hourly wage but did not pay weekly allowances.
From the workers’ point of view, weekly holiday pay has become a ‘double-edged sword’. The number of new jobs has increased, but the number of jobs that allow stable long-term work has decreased, lowering the overall quality of employment. According to the Economically Active Population Survey by the National Statistical Office, the number of workers with average working hours of less than 15 hours per week increased by about 1.2 times from 1.332 million in June 2019, five years ago, to 1.556 million in June this year. As of June, it accounts for 5.4% of the total number of employed (28,812,000).
The practice of splitting employment is a factor that reduces economic vitality. A 64-year-old mother-in-law who runs a franchise restaurant in Seongdong-gu, Seoul, will give up her weekend dinner business this year and close at 3 p.m. on weekends. Mr. Jang complained, “There is no way to hire employees who work long hours while paying weekly allowances, and it is difficult to find part-timers who work 14 hours without paying weekly allowances.” He added, “It is more convenient to abolish the weekly holiday pay and raise the hourly wage to 10,000 won or more without having to think about and calculate how to hire part-timers based on 15 hours.”Experts also pointed out that the current system of including holiday pay in the minimum wage worsens the quality of employment. The Future Labor Market Research Association said in a labor market reform recommendation in December of last year, “Weekend allowance complicates the calculation of working hours and wages and is the cause of attracting split contracts of ‘less than 15 hours’.”