Lee Haesik Proposes Bill to Establish Legal Basis for Time Negotiation Rights of Part-Time Public Officials

"Will Do Our Best to Ensure Stable Working Environment and Rights Protection for Part-Time Public Officials"

A bill has been prepared to prevent the appointing authority from unilaterally changing the working hours of time-selective public officials.

On the 1st, Lee Hae-sik, a member of the National Assembly's Public Administration and Security Committee from the Democratic Party of Korea, jointly proposed the "Partial Amendment to the National Public Officials Act" and the "Partial Amendment to the Local Public Officials Act," which include provisions establishing the right to negotiate working hours for time-selective public officials.

This is a follow-up bill aimed at improving the treatment and protecting the rights of time-selective public officials, following the partial amendments to the Government Organization Act and the Local Public Officials Act that Lee proposed as the main sponsor in April last year.

The "time-selective public official system," introduced to keep pace with the diversifying labor environment, provides new employment opportunities for workers who find it difficult to work full-time, and from the institution's perspective, it is a reasonable measure to supplement insufficient personnel and provide smooth administrative services to the public.

However, under the current Public Officials Appointment Decree, the weekly working hours of time-selective public officials are set by the appointing authority or the recommending authority within the range of 15 to 35 hours, which has led to problems such as the appointing authority drastically reducing working hours the day before parental leave or frequently changing working hours.

In the case of a time-selective public official appointed in 2015, there was even a case where working hours were changed as many as 12 times.

To prevent unilateral changes to working hours by the appointing authority for time-selective public officials, Lee included in the bill a provision that when the head of a national institution or local government readjusts the working hours after appointing a time-selective public official, they must consult with the official regarding the working hours.

Lee said, "I hope this bill will help secure the working hour sovereignty of time-selective public officials and contribute to establishing a stable working environment for them," adding, "I will continue to do my best to ensure a stable working environment and protect the rights of time-selective public officials."

In December 2021, Lee also took the lead in proposing a partial amendment to the National Public Officials Act to define the quota of time-selective public officials as "the number of public officials by type and rank belonging to each institution, expressed as a fixed number at the institutional level," and in April last year, he led the proposal of the "Abolition of the Decimal Quota System for Time-Selective Recruitment Public Officials Act," among other efforts to improve the treatment of time-selective recruitment public officials.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.