Half of Office Workers Say They Cannot Freely Use Spousal Shared Parental Leave

Starting next year, a policy will be implemented where couples taking parental leave together will each receive 100% of their ordinary wages as parental leave pay for the first six months. However, a survey revealed that nearly half of the workers are unable to freely use this system.

Photo by Asia Economy DB

On the 9th, a survey conducted by Workplace Bullying 119 and the Beautiful Foundation through the polling agency Embrain Public, questioned 1,000 workers from April 4 to 11 last month. When asked whether they could freely take parental leave, 25.5% of respondents answered "somewhat no," and 20.0% answered "not at all."

The inability to freely use parental leave showed a 2 to 3.5 times difference between groups such as non-regular workers (61.5%) and regular workers (34.8%), workplaces with fewer than 5 employees (69.9%) versus public institutions (19.5%) and large corporations (28.9%), and monthly wage groups under 1.5 million KRW (65.6%) versus over 5 million KRW (27.9%).

When asked whether they could freely use maternity leave, 22.4% responded "somewhat no," and 17.6% responded "not at all."

The responses indicating inability to freely use maternity leave were 2 to 4 times higher among non-regular workers (58.3%), workplaces with fewer than 5 employees (67.5%), and workers earning less than 1.5 million KRW per month (58.1%) compared to regular workers (27.8%), public institutions (16.1%), large corporations (23.0%), and those earning over 5 million KRW per month (20.9%).

From January 2021 to July this year, there were 54 confirmed cases of pregnancy and childcare-related workplace bullying reported via email to Workplace Bullying 119.

Among these, dismissal or forced resignation accounted for the highest number with 20 cases, followed by unfair evaluations or personnel transfers with 13 cases, workplace harassment with 10 cases, refusal of reduced working hours with 7 cases, and denial of annual leave use with 4 cases.

Kim Yu-kyung, a labor attorney at Dolkkot Labor Law Firm affiliated with Workplace Bullying 119, stated, "Failure to grant maternity or parental leave or unfavorable treatment of workers after leave is a clear criminal act under labor relations laws with criminal penalties. To overcome the ultra-low birthrate, effective sanctions must be enforced so that every woman in the workplace can use at least the minimum required system."

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