The Supreme Court has ruled that uniformly deducting one hour from overtime worked by part-time civil servants, as is done for full-time employees, is unjustified when calculating their additional pay.
The first division of the Supreme Court, with Justice Ma Yong-joo as the presiding judge, overturned a lower court ruling that had dismissed a wage lawsuit filed by civil servants at a national university against the government, and remanded the case to the Seoul High Court, the legal community said Wednesday.
The plaintiffs were appointed in 2016 as part-time civil servants working four hours a day for five days, totaling 20 hours per week. They worked overtime on multiple occasions, but the university, citing regulations on civil servant allowances, uniformly deducted one hour from their overtime hours and paid allowances only for the remaining time. The regulation was established on the premise that there are periods before and after overtime when actual work is not performed, and that dinner or break times often occur during overtime, so allowances should be paid only for hours when actual work is performed. The plaintiffs argued that they originally worked only from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., and when working overtime afterward, they worked continuously without separate dinner or break times, contending that the regulation, which presupposes the work patterns of regular civil servants, should not apply to them.
The first-instance court ruled in favor of the civil servants. The trial court explained that "the 'one-hour deduction regulation' was first established in 2012, before the part-time civil servant recruitment system was introduced," adding that "it was based on a 40-hour workweek and did not consider the implementation of the part-time civil servant system with a 20-hour workweek." The court further stated, "It is not reasonable to apply the 'one-hour deduction regulation,' which typically presumes a work pattern involving meals after 6 p.m., directly to the plaintiffs."
The appellate court, however, reversed the first-instance ruling. It cited reasons including the difficulty of individually measuring the diverse work patterns of each civil servant and the fact that disadvantages are compensated to some extent through fixed meal allowances and fixed overtime allowances.
The Supreme Court, however, again accepted the civil servants' arguments. The court ruled that the deduction provision in question cannot be applied to overtime performed by part-time civil servants within ordinary working hours. The Supreme Court said, "For part-time civil servants, four hours of overtime per day mostly occurs within the ordinary working hours when full-time civil servants are normally working," adding that "it is uncommon for only part-time civil servants to take separate break times in situations where organizational work continues under the supervision and direction of superiors." The court further pointed out, "Nevertheless, deducting one hour in the same manner as for night work outside ordinary working hours constitutes discrimination without reasonable grounds and infringes upon the right to equality."
The government argued that there was a supplementary measure under the Ministry of Personnel Management's regulations to additionally pay a fixed monthly allowance equivalent to 10 hours to civil servants with 15 or more attendance days, but this was not accepted. The Supreme Court said, "This fixed allowance is paid uniformly regardless of whether overtime is worked, making it difficult to view it as fully compensating for the relative disadvantages suffered by part-time civil servants."
