Union Full-Time Staff Limit Increased 10-Fold and Only Chairperson's Base Salary Raised... Ministry of Employment and Labor Finds Violations at 39 Sites

'Announcement of Interim Results on Planned Labor Inspections Including Working Hours Exemption System'
Approximately 140 Additional Labor Inspections Conducted by January

37 workplaces were caught by the Ministry of Employment and Labor for unfairly providing operating expenses, such as exceeding the limit of union full-time officers paid by the employer by 10 times or only increasing the basic salary of the union chairman.

On the 2nd, the Ministry of Employment and Labor announced the interim results of the "Planned Labor Inspection on the Operation of the Working Hours Exemption System and Operating Expense Support."

The Ministry is conducting labor inspections on about 200 workplaces from September 18 to this month’s 30th. Among them, the interim inspection results for 62 workplaces confirmed violations at 39 locations. There were 36 unfair labor practices including exceeding the working hours exemption limit (29 cases) and illegal operating expense support (7 cases), 11 illegal collective agreements, and 8 unreported collective agreements.

Working hours exempted personnel are union full-time officers who receive salaries from the employer without providing the prescribed labor under the labor contract, either determined by collective agreement or with the employer’s consent, and engage only in union duties. They can perform tasks stipulated by this law or other laws such as negotiation and consultation with the employer, grievance handling, industrial safety activities, and union maintenance and management work for the development of sound labor-management relations.

The number and hours of working hours exempted personnel can be set within the legal exemption limits considering the number of union members working in each business or workplace. The exemption limit is up to 2,000 hours annually for unions with 99 or fewer members, and up to 3,000 hours for those with 100 to 199 members. Paying salaries beyond this limit constitutes unfair labor practices by the employer.

As an interim inspection result, local public enterprise B Company used 311 exempted personnel, about 10 times the limit of 32 people, by approving exempted personnel retroactively without designating them in advance. Automotive parts manufacturer C Company operated exempted personnel by factory instead of setting the exemption limit based on the entire workplace. Food manufacturer H Company arbitrarily excluded 1,120 hours such as annual and summer leave from the statutory limit of 5,000 hours and the prescribed working hours of 3 part-time exempted personnel, exceeding the exemption limit by 784 hours.

Regarding operating expense support, an automotive parts manufacturer was found to have supported the union with a total of about 1.04 billion KRW over one year, a telecommunications and broadcasting equipment manufacturer provided 10 union-exclusive passenger cars worth about 170 million KRW annually and maintenance costs (70 million KRW), and a semiconductor manufacturer increased only the union chairman’s basic salary by 6 million KRW.

The Ministry of Employment and Labor plans to take strict measures such as criminal punishment if violations are not corrected following the inspection results, and for the public sector, it will coordinate with related ministries such as the Ministry of Economy and Finance to reflect the violations in public institution management evaluations to ensure that illegal and unfair practices are promptly corrected.

Lee Seong-hee, Vice Minister of Employment and Labor, said, "Acts such as employers recognizing working hours exemption for union officials beyond the limits set by the Labor Union Act or excessively paying operating expenses to unions infringe on the autonomy of unions and undermine the soundness of labor-management relations, violating the Labor Union Act. We will continue labor inspections targeting about 140 additional workplaces until November and expand inspections considering scale and industry in the future. By strictly responding to illegal acts related to working hours exemption, we will do our best to establish the rule of law in labor relations."

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