"Boss, I'd like to take one hour of annual leave."
A bill allowing workers to use their annual paid leave in hourly increments has passed a standing committee of the National Assembly. Once implemented, the system is expected to enable workers to take leave in units as small as one hour, going beyond the current half-day minimum.
The National Assembly's Climate, Energy, Environment and Labor Committee held a plenary session on Wednesday and approved the amendment to the Labor Standards Act.
The core of the amendment is that it establishes a legal basis for splitting annual paid leave into hourly units, not just full-day units. Specific implementation details will be determined by presidential decree.
Under the new system, workers will be able to break up their leave by the hour according to their needs, moving beyond the current practice of taking leave in full-day or half-day blocks. For example, a worker on an eight-hour workday could use three days of annual leave by arriving one hour late every day for a month.
The amendment also includes a provision prohibiting employers from penalizing workers for using their annual leave. Violators face fines of up to 5 million won ($3,600).
The committee also approved an amendment to the Equal Employment Act that doubles paid fertility treatment leave from two days to four days. It also expanded the scope of workplace sexual harassment penalties to cover not only business owners but also corporate representatives and their relatives.
The amendments are widely seen as a response to the reality that many workers struggle to use their annual leave.
A survey conducted by Workplace Gabjil 119, a civic group, from October 1 to October 14 last year among 1,000 workers aged 19 and older found that 71% said their annual paid leave was guaranteed. However, significant gaps emerged by employment type and workplace size. While 87.7% of regular workers said their leave was guaranteed, only 46% of non-regular workers said the same. The figure dropped further to 32.3% for workplaces with fewer than five employees.
Responses to whether workers could "freely use annual leave whenever they wanted" also showed a stark divide — 84.5% of permanent workers said yes compared with 45.5% of non-permanent workers. At workplaces with 300 or more employees, 88.8% said it was possible, but only 43.3% said so at workplaces with fewer than five employees.
Notably, 37.9% of workers reported using fewer than six days of annual leave per year. The proportion was even higher among non-regular workers (65.3%) and those at workplaces with fewer than five employees (76.8%).