South Korea has limited a working week to 52 hours, in order to stop overwork

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/07/south-korea-is-trying-to-stop-overwork-by-limiting-the-maximum-workweek-to-52-hours

by dsr12 • 8 years ago

253 166 8 years ago

weforum.org

sandworm101• 8 years ago

Unless they have also come up with a solid definition of "work", this will be meaningless. Does it include work done from home? Work done on your own time? Will it allow us to turn off the cellphone all weekend?

I say this as a government worker spending his Saturday night doing an online course I need to complete before a training day on Tuesday. I'm on salary and so do not get overtime. But to compete I have to pull the rabbit from the hat and somehow get everything done. That means doing work-related tasks in my own time. (This is a busy month. Things will get easier later in the year and everyone knows it. Nobody is complaining.)

readhn2• 8 years ago

Many just starting out in the finance industry are pulling 80-100 hour weeks with no overtime. If you calculate per hour wages - a waitress gets paid more. BoA intern collapsed and died at work from over working not too long ago. Life goes on.

overeater• 8 years ago

Many waitresses and bartenders especially at high end places get paid more than almost any other profession, so it's an unfair comparison. My friends who have these jobs pull $200-400 a night in tips, so probably equivalent to $600/night if we include their hourly salary and that they don't pay taxes on it.

readhn2• 8 years ago

Goldman Sachs limits intern day to 17 hours haha

https://www.salon.com/2015/06/18/goldman_sachs_reduces_inter...

hocuspocus• 8 years ago

Having worked 5 years in Korea I'd say the worst offenders don't let people work from home anyway. The main issue is that there's typically already a maximum overtime per week you can clock in. But this doesn't stop anyone to work beyond the limit and not claim those hours.

Edit: HN is funny sometimes, I'm downvoted for stating simple facts. At least you could elaborate on how I somehow offended you.

OSButler• 8 years ago

Not to mention company outings/excursions during the weekends and additional courses/education after work. Japan is usually coming up when talking about crazy work hours, but South Korea appeared to be just as bad, so I'm curious how such regulation would actually apply if all those extra hours are not being counted to your actual work hours.

phkahler• 8 years ago

> Does it include work done from home? Work done on your own time? Will it allow us to turn off the cellphone all weekend?

It certainly should. I have a policy of not working from home except under rare circumstances. Not do I work on my own time. I don't carry a company cell phone or check email when I'm not there. I never set up the VPN to enable this kind of abuse either. Set some boundaries, it's good for you and contrary to what most people think you will probably be respected for it.

maccard• 8 years ago

I have work email on a pull system at home, and do have VPN access set up. Knowing that I can be contacted if my company desires it means that in return they are flexible with me. It's a two way street.

DSMan195276• 8 years ago

I would presume this is mostly limited to hourly work. It's not like this could ever be enforced for salaried workers because, as you pointed out, you usually don't get overtime and your hours are likely not even logged anyway.

When talking about hourly work, the distinction is pretty clear as your hours are already getting logged. Legally, you are required to be paid for any work you do, including "work done on your own time". (Of course, that's largely true for the US. That may be less true in South Korea I suppose. And of course, they can get mad at you for working extra hours, but they still have to pay you for it).

gsnedders2• 8 years ago

Note this varies a lot around the world. In plenty of places salaried workers working beyond their normal working hours are entitled to compensation for overtime (and are still subject to maximum working hours restrictions, minimum rest periods, etc.)

mikekchar• 8 years ago

I'm not super familiar with Korean culture, but often it's similar to Japanese culture. In Japan government pronouncements are either almost completely followed by people (spirit as well as letter of the law) or completely ignored by people. It's a consensus mentality and if the consensus is formed, then the social pressure to follow along is huge.

In Japan, we've been getting more and more public holidays because people actually take them off (as opposed to their vacation time). We're up to 17 days now. In addition, a few years ago the government insisted that every government worker take 5 days off around Obon (Buddhist holiday usually in August). When I was working at the school, it was taken seriously and people were shipped off even if they wanted to work.

Other things just don't get the consensus. For example, after a fairly recent overwork death, they instituted the idea that every second Friday should end at 3:00 pm. I think that was completely ignored.

As far as effective measure like this, it's not so much crafting a law that describes what should happen, it's more about throwing spaghetti against the wall until it sticks. In other areas, I was around when sexual harassment was an unfortunate, but mostly accepted thing in business. Then one day the government said, "Don't do that" and it just changed over night. It's not like the government had been doing nothing before that, or that the introduced laws were particularly good -- it's just that for whatever reason the society was ready to accept it at that time.

In the context of that kind of culture, I applaud the Korean government's actions. It may or may not have the desired effect today, but if they keep at it, it will probably just improve overnight. Also, the fact that this hits the news is good for other similar cultures like Japan. They see it and the people think, "Maybe we're backwards for following this old way of working". When enough people do that, then it just changes. Very, very, very different than the west.

fourthark• 8 years ago

Being forced to soften the rollout of the policy indicates how much the plan was driven by the government, rather than workers themselves that rely on overtime to earn enough money.

That changes the story, doesn't it? With so many of us ineligible for overtime in the US, being "management", we may wonder why anyone would work quite that much.

njarboe2• 8 years ago

It seems that in the US that having to pay more for overtime is hurting people more than it helps them at this point. Especially people on the lower end of the wage scale. If you want/need to work more then usually you have too have two jobs with all the extra commuting and scheduling. It would be better if people could work 60hr for one employer instead of two.

tbihl2• 8 years ago

That was certainly my experience. I used to ask if I could just report only 2/3rds of my overtime hours to get the same effective rate. Of course, I had no awareness of the software that would be flagging the 'ineffective manager' if I showed up as getting paid the higher rate, regardless of reality.

throwaway20484• 8 years ago

Shouldnt we be focusing on the fact that people need to work 60 hours rather than accomidating the system that enables it.

jadedhacker• 8 years ago

Hopefully a tighter labor market will result in higher wages for workers, reducing the necessity of overtime. There's some evidence that in the united states that employers are so powerful that even the tightest labor market in years isn't increasing wages.

EDIT: However, can you imagine such reforms being implemented here? This is the power of a leftist coalition capturing the state. As mild a reform as this is, it stretches the imagination for what is possible here.

walshemj2• 8 years ago

Hasn't made a huge difference in the EU though in non unionised companies - but I think anything would be an improvement.

A minimum statutory leave policy would make more of a difference say 4 weeks minimum.

brightball• 8 years ago

Part of that is artificial price controls due to insurance.

In markets controlled by insurance payouts, higher demand doesn’t allow the business to increase the price service.

dev_dull• 8 years ago

What evidence do you have that it's employers who are powerful holding down wages? Being a small business owner in America sucks. You can barely afford to employ anybody.

yulaow• 8 years ago

Honestly, that's what says any employer in any part of the world. I am currently in a SW-EU state and I hear the same exact words every day, and here the work market is far more heavy regulated and taxed.

jjoonathan• 8 years ago

The productivity-pay gap.

It might not apply to small businesses, but we're talking about the whole economy, not just small businesses.

throwaway20484• 8 years ago

Look all over this thread.

The american additude towards employer-employee relationships is totally fucked.

mattm• 8 years ago

Because they've been found guilty of it. Apple, Google and others were found to be colluding to keep salaries down and recently the same thing has been found in the animation industry with Pixar, Disney and others.

f00_• 8 years ago

but the largest employeers destroy unions, and have more bargaining power than a single employee

imajoo• 8 years ago

They have already increased the minimum wages and consumer prices have started to creep up. Outside of the Chaebol's (ie: Samsung, Hyundai, LG, etc) there are a f-ton of small businesses. Source: I live and work in Korea.

miguelrochefort4• 8 years ago

This is ridiculous.

It all depends on the person and the job. Some people can work a lot more than others. Likewise, some jobs are less demanding than others.

This is just as bad as minimum wage laws.

How do these people come up with such absurd laws?

sb82442• 8 years ago

Are you familiar with the working culture in Korea? I only spent a few months there but it became clear from what I heard from professionals and students that 60+ hour work week is the average. Sure some jobs may be more than that in a healthy market, but it didn't seem like it was healthy.

miguelrochefort4• 8 years ago

I don't deny that there's a problem. I argue that the proposed solution is short-sighted and inadequate.

What are the incentives for companies to decrease work hours?What are the incentives for people to work less? What should people do with their time that's more beneficial than working? What compromises will these people have to make now that they're earning less (assuming their overtime was paid)? How will the productivity of Korean companies be affected by this 25-40% drop in employee work time?

Hopefully companies will realize that increased work hours have diminishing returns and/or invest in automation to cope with the lack of resources. Hopefully the government doesn't then introduce even sillier laws (such as taxing automation).

yongjik2• 8 years ago

How do these people come up with such absurd laws?

52 hours per week is 7.5 hours every day, including weekends, or 10.4 hours every day assuming you work Mon-Fri. If the society (or the mythical free market) could regulate itself so that people don't have to work this crazy hours to earn living, we wouldn't have this "absurd" law.

Unfortunately, the South Korean society has failed to regulate itself. Hence the law. The very fact that some pundits and employers are crying loudly shows why this law was necessary.

You know, when you go to any restaurant (in the US), "Maximum Occupancy 140" signs look just as absurd. What will happen when the 141st patron walks in? Will the building crumble down or what?

...Except that these regulations were written with people's blood.

miguelrochefort4• 8 years ago

If Koreans really want to work less, then some company would reduce the work week to 40 hours and get flooded with all of Korea's best employees.

The fact that this hasn't happened means that something else is preventing the market from regulating itself.

Perhaps people prefer to work longer hours and possibly earn more. Perhaps the market is very competitive and this is the only way to stay relevant. Perhaps something makes it difficult for companies to hire more employees. Perhaps Korean people can work 68 hours with little diminishing return. Perhaps the taxes are too high. I don't know.

TheAceOfHearts• 8 years ago

AFAIK, maximum occupancy is based on how quickly people could be safely evacuated in the event of an accident such as a fire. IMO, they're not comparable.

I could totally imagine someone working 40 hours a week and then more than 12 hours working on related projects for entertainment or educational purposes, or if you're a founder and very passionate about what you're doing. Maybe you have a big presentation lined up and you want to get a great demo ready in time. It's probably not sustainable for a long-term period of time, but you should still be free to decide how you want to invest your time.

swfsql6• 8 years ago

How do these people come up with such absurd laws?

This is an interesting question. How they come up with, get agreement on it and get support on it by the population?

The problem is certainly democracy, where people think that interventionism will ever do any good. This is probably because they can't foresee any firm life improvement for the future (due to interventions already made on the market -- e.g. central banking+inflation), and given the lack of economic understanding, they embrace such ideas. The endless battle of interventionism solving the problems of interventionism, and so the state (bureocrat's power) keeps growing.

Such interventions would probably be a net-profit for corporations who already invested in mechanizing/automating some jobs, and their potential competitors would get a disadvantage from the new law, so they get to charge a higher price than they would otherwise. This is usually true for specific/specialized interventions, but a generalized on such this, this is unlikely.

zebraflask• 8 years ago

These are the same people who overpay for BTC and, if I remember an HN article from a little while ago, have "death ceremonies" where their employees are made to imagine their own deaths to prove loyalty to the company.

Make of that what you will.

torpfactory• 8 years ago

The amount of work we do is such a complicated issue. Here are a few primer questions to get you started:

How do we quantify amount worked on the continuum of knowledge workers vs. physical laborers?

How much are working hours determined by personal preferences and desires (getting promoted, actually enjoy job, etc) vs. demands imposed by management/project requirements?

How much of time worked depends on the culture (of a company, of an industry, of a country)?

How to quantify work "in the office" vs. at home "answering a few emails? Some people like being really flexible. I personally prefer very binary working/not working lifestyle.

How much should we work throughout our careers (I prefer the idea that we can "turn down the volume" on work during child rearing years, but this is in direct opposition to typical career advancement timelines)?

Is there any reasonable definition of a "full work week"? What is it (40 hours?)

Should we have a minimum wage at all? Does a minimum wage increase productivity by artificially making labor more expensive?

halflings• 8 years ago

"Should we have a minimum wage at all? Does a minimum wage increase productivity by artificially making labor more expensive?"

The goal of minimum wage is not to increase productivity, but provide a "safety net" for people at the bottom of the pyramid salary-wise.

Public education and healthcare also artificially reduce the price of these services, but the goal again is to provide a safety net to all those that otherwise would not be able to afford them.

another-one-off3• 8 years ago

The goal of a minimum wage is difficult to pin down, because laws are written by large groups of people with potentially differing motivations.

That being said, I hope it isn't about a safety net. What a minimum wage really does is outlaw jobs that provide less value than the minimum wage (eg, if I have cleaning work that requires 1hr of labour and generates value of $10, it theoretically will not happen under a minimum wage regime of $11/hr).

With this frame, there does seem to be much debate about the interaction between the market price for labour and the value-add of different work. People want to make decisions here and I suspect they don't consider have all the facts. Politics as usual :].

themagician• 8 years ago

All of these come after the question: “What is life worth?”

In both the US and in most Asian cultures work is worth more than life for the vast majority of the average lifespan. Working long hours is considered a badge of honor. In the US you work towards retirement—that’s the goal. That’s the endgame.

The fundamental question is: is that right? Is it worth it? Should we spend 40 years trying to make as money as we can so that we can then do nothing? The entire system, from top to bottom, is designed for this. And we give little breaks in between those 40 years so people don’t become depressed and kill themselves.

Whenever I hear about people justify why they work so hard it’s almost always because they want to become rich so they won’t have to work. It makes me think of that line from Office Space, “You don't need a million dollars to do nothing, man. Take a look at my cousin. He's broke and he don't do shit.“

We do what the media tells us because we never stop to think about what we actually want.

taurath• 8 years ago

Whenever I hear about people justify why they work so hard it’s almost always because they want to become rich so they won’t have to work

I think most people want to work so they can afford certain things - depending on their values either a really neat place to live, a bunch of experiences, etc, but then find that in order to work to afford those things you get caught up in a cycle. There's plenty of people who aren't optimizing for retired life in their 60s and 70s - but at the same time recognize that after they actually CAN'T work any more they need to take some care of themselves.

We tend to talk about work and jobs as if they're always mind-numbing drudgery - I think that's what people buy into, especially by having families and needing to be a breadwinner. You don't need to have a family. You don't need a big house. But for a lot of people, they want a family, and they want a big house. I wish there were more society did to set up alternate lifestyles, but it is sort of the engine that keeps society going.

ataturk• 8 years ago

The problem with being broke and lazy is that the quality of life totally sucks and that a single health emergency probably means you are going to die. Food for thought.

Also, it sucks but I can tell you firsthand that having a million dollars isn't that helpful. I don't worry about bills, but I can't really retire young. Well, I could, but I would never be able to travel, pay for my kids' college, or have any unexpected expenses for the rest of my life, which would totally suck.

hycaria3• 8 years ago

Working with retirement as a goal seems like a very bad idea.

FooBarWidget• 8 years ago

The fundamental question is: is that right? Is it worth it? Should we spend 40 years trying to make as money as we can so that we can then do nothing?

Consider that 100-200 years ago, you had to work your entire life just to stay alive. There was no retirement.

hrktb2• 8 years ago

In the US you work towards retirement—that’s the goal. That’s the endgame.

To further your point, I think this is more a utilitarian societal lie (like cheaters get caught etc.) than anything.

The age of retirement is set to get non efficient people out of the market, and as people get fitter and fitter it gets pushed ahead (right now it is raised (or is discussed to be?) 65 in a number of countries for instance).

Doing everything one dreams to do during retirement is lunacy, chances are this time is spent in an hospice or retirement isn’t even reached.

TangoTrotFox5• 8 years ago

You need to consider what work and, more generally, what society is. Society is fundamentally a group of people working together to satisfy each others needs and wants. Work, or productivity, is making progress towards this goal and is something we tend to reward with money, though not always.

I think a fair analogy for society's productivity is a grocery store. Imagine there was a grocery store, the only grocery store in existence that also happened to be the only way to get food. Everybody would come in and take whatever they needed, but you didn't necessarily have to pay. If only some people don't pay this isn't that big a deal - the grocery store as a whole eats the losses but continues working more or less fine. And for those that simply cannot pay at all, well - there's not really any other option. But then there are those that could pay, but for whatever reason, do not. If enough people did this - the store would eventually go out of business as it would not be making enough to sustain itself. If everybody just did as they want, society would collapse.

More generally here money is an indicator of how much you've contributed to society. People look at disbelief at how much Jeff Bezos is worth, yet somehow think nothing of how much Amazon has completely revolutionized the world of purchasing things as well as brought prices to lower than ever levels. The reason he's worth as much as he is is because he has contributed immensely to society.

Of course the system isn't ideal and some people manage to make enormous amounts of money while contributing next to nothing to society - people who deal with finance are the prototypical example here. And similarly there are also people that contribute immensely to society, yet never see much in the way of reward from it. Herman Melville is now seen as one of the more important individuals in our literary history, yet received no recognition during his life and died without his work ever really being recognized, let alone rewarded.

Yet for all of its flaws, our system does generally do a good job of creating a system where people who contribute to society are rewarded which creates a strong incentive system to contribute to society, even if only to make yourself rich in the process.

Joeri• 8 years ago

My father in law worked nights and weekends his whole life with big plans for what to do after retirement. Then he passed away unexpectedly at 57. My father on the other hand just didn’t retire, because he loves working too much, but he goes on a lot of vacations.

squirrelicus2• 8 years ago

Counter point to the question "what is life worth?", which I think is a bit of sophistry in that it complects the discussion to tangential subjects like the price you would pay to save a life.

I would rather ask "what is the value of not working?" To me, an American and a male, work is the number one way I choose to be valuable. If I chose not to work, or to work less, I would unquestionably provide less value to my society and my loved ones. I like being valuable. I like doing, hard frustrating things so my loved ones don't have to. I like working, even if (and because) I fucking hate it sometimes. Therefore, I love that I work. It is the most valuable thing I do.

reactor• 8 years ago

I think most of us keep working because we are lazy to live a life.

golergka2• 8 years ago

I still haven't found a more fun and rewarding thing than work.

ekianjo• 8 years ago

Thats precisely why reducing a complicated multi dimensional space in a single metric measuring time is completely wrong in concept.

cryptonector• 8 years ago

http://bruceblinn.com/parable.html

benatkin4• 8 years ago

What if John McCarthy or Richard Feynman had been limited to 52 hours a week? Or more recently, pg or sama? Or less recently, Albert Einstein or Alan Turing?

Edit: I posted it without reading the article, but it's worse than expected. Execs can go to prison.

Edit 2: Having a working hour limit applied across the board could result in knowledge workers having to track their time, which works great for some but not for others.

throwaway0803832• 8 years ago

Academics and entrepreneurs don't get paid by the hour.

benatkin4• 8 years ago

Not all countries have certain types of salaried employees exempt from overtime and overtime pay. South Korea doesn't appear to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_hours_in_South_Korea#D...

claudiawerner5• 8 years ago

I don't think it's wise to be against this law because some people might be limited; by and large, this is a good thing - it means that workers are exploited less, it means that there will be consequences for those who force workers to work so much overtime in a culture in which you're not seen as being dedicated enough if you refuse to do overtime.

I immediately thought "the people you've named would just continue to work anyway, because they're 'the greats'", but I also realised that some of them would need specialised equipment, the sort that would be closed off outside of the hours permitted. Perhaps there should be some system in which such people can apply to use the eqipment outside of hours. But it could be that bosses (or even employees themselves, feeling pressured) would apply to use them, citing personal reasons rather than "work reasons".

But in the end, I really don't see it as a bad thing that "execs can go to prison"; I think that unless there are serious consequences, and the law only has monetary fines (which matter less and less so long as they aren't large proportions of revenue) then the law will be skirted or simply violated.

In the end, I really think this law does more good than it does potential harm. Overwork is a serious issue, but your proposal that we shouldn't have it raises important questions. Employers discovered in the 20th century that it would be efficient for the direction of the employee's conatus aligns with the company's, such that the employee will feel joy and even want to work longer hours - this of course being more effective than the older system (usually employed in manual labour with few levels of management) of taking advantage of the basal desire for material reproduction. With longer hours, it's easier for an employer to push this desire to the employee.

And by the way, I was much more convinced of your argument with regard to people like McCarthy, Feynman, Einstiein and Turing than our friends pg and sama :-)

sokoloff3• 8 years ago

I don't think it's wise to be against this law because some people might be limited; by and large, this is a good thing

I don't like infringing the freedom of individual workers to contract as they see fit. Pursuit of happiness and all that...

(I'm also opposed to minimum wage and pro-sustenance-UBI.)

swfsql6• 8 years ago

by and large, this is a good thing - it means that workers are exploited less

then just fire them already, huh? zero exploitation!

jhpriestley• 8 years ago

What if Einstein's job at the patent office had been 60 hours a week?

benatkin4• 8 years ago

That's a good counterpoint. A carefully constructed law might be needed, but this one sounds like it's only based on the size of the company, and has harsh penalties.

robertAngst2• 8 years ago

I dont think a revolutionary would have taken that sitting down.

They find solutions to everything.

robertAngst2• 8 years ago

So:

Intellectually slow workers will be replaced/fired
Good workers will be working more to compensate for less labor output in the country
Outsourcing former SK jobs to other countrys with less oppressive laws.

fareesh2• 8 years ago

How does this work exactly?

If you are an employee and your boss calls you and asks you to work the 53rd hour, what do you do?

tbihl2• 8 years ago

Grumble about illegal work practices on the subway ride to work, one would assume.

pboutros• 8 years ago

Your response is presumably somewhere between: (1) what you'd do if your boss asked you to murder someone (2) what you'd do if your boss asked you to make them a coffee.

(In all seriousness, you probably just go to their labor board website and fill out a form or something.)

fareesh2• 8 years ago

I guess my point was that it's complicated from a relationship point of view. Let's say I've worked 3 years at a particular job. This law goes into effect. The following week my boss asks me to do 53 hours of work.

What do I do now? I don't want to do the 53rd hour. Do I say no to the boss? Sure maybe he can't legally do anything punitive, but that doesn't mean he won't. What happens to my relationships at work? What happens when my peers decide to do the 53rd hour of work and so they are seen as more valuable to the company? Do management folks start seeing me as less of a team player?

What if I go to the labor board? Now the company is chastized for asking me to work beyond 53 hours. What does that do for my relationships at work? My reviews? Promotion prospects?

Let's say I move to another job. Word gets around that I'm a litigious sort of guy who goes to the labour board when I'm asked to work more than 52 hours.

Does this law protect me in a practical way? Is enforcing this law possible in a practical way, which does not cause other problems for the employee?

scotchio2• 8 years ago

I was just having a dumb convo with a friend about how JUST a simple 3-day weekend can make you way more productive for like the next 2 weeks.

Refreshed, on top of personal life stuff, and ready to go. Why do we work 5 on, 2 off? How did that naturally become the standard.

I'd argue that if our economy did a rolling 5 on, 3 off for everyone the whole output would net MORE productivity overall

erkaes• 8 years ago

I think this might work for cognitive-based works like programming but not for muscle-based works like doing constructions.

scotchio2• 8 years ago

Yep, true

freedomben• 8 years ago

Totally agree. I worked at a company that gave us the option of working 4/10s (Mon-Thurs, 10 hour shifts) or what we called a 9/80 where you would Mon-Fri the first week, but only Mon-Thurs the second week (9 hour shifts). The 9/80 was the most productive schedule ever. Having a 3 day weekend every other weekend helped me recharge and really improved my work:life balance.

knuththetruth• 8 years ago

How did that naturally become the standard.

It didn’t. People fought and died for this and many other protections, engaged in massive disruptions of their workplaces and society at large. If history and the developing world are at all examples, businesses would rather work people to death and use every form of coercion possible to drive down the price of labor.

The degree to which we forget that this and are unwilling to do the same is the degree to which these rights will be eroded.

freddie_mercury• 8 years ago

To add to that...in the country I live in (a developing country in Asia), 5-2 is NOT the standard.

If you work for a western company or have a skilled white collar type job you work either 5-2 or 5½-1½. That is, you work a half day every Saturday. It is so common that every commercial lease I've seen covers it. e.g. "we provide air conditioning from 8am-6pm Monday to Friday and 8am-1pm on Saturday".

Everyone else -- which is probably 90% of the country -- works 6 days a week. That is, they only get 1 day a week off. 4 days a month. (And it is common for people to work 10 hour shifts.)

As you say, 5-2 only became the standard because originally it was 7-0, which then became 6-1, which then became 5-2. Each of those transitions took decades. In Australia, the 5-2 work week didn't become a thing until 1948. It took a 2 year court case to change from a 6-1 schedule to a 5-2 schedule. At the time employers said, "Australia is committed to an unnecessary and dangerous experiment".

Hong Kong only implemented the 5-2 schedule for government workers in 2006. Before that, they were expected to work on Saturdays.

In Saudi Arabia, I believe that government workers still work 6-1 schedules.

hycaria3• 8 years ago

Well I'm already bored after one day of week end. On the contrary I wish I could work half day every day

mrhappyunhappy4• 8 years ago

Have you tried making that happen? I don't know your work situation but maybe it's worth a shot giving it a try.

marvin2• 8 years ago

I am currently working every other Friday off, did every Friday off from last October to April this year. It's the biggest quality-of-life improvement in my career. Well worth the pay cut. Everyone should have the option of doing it.

therajiv• 8 years ago

Seems like this could have dramatic effects on some professions where 60+ hour workweeks are typical even outside of Korea, e.g. being an early startup employee or adhering to the strenuous pro gamer practice schedule. While it's probably not healthy to work that much, in the short-term, throwing more time at a job depending on the profession can sometimes optimize your reward function.

Bahamut2• 8 years ago

An aside to the main content of the article, I found interesting that Mexico topped the list - Mexicans seem to uphold the stereotype that they’re super hard workers.

philliphaydon• 8 years ago

Japan is listed lower than the United States, and even New Zealand, so I can't really tell how valid this information is.

Japan culture for working long ours is insane, you simply do not leave the office before your boss, people sit at the desks doing nothing until the boss leaves. This mindset exists in Korea too.

Bahamut2• 8 years ago

This probably includes more than just office jobs.

swfsql6• 8 years ago

It will work for sure since bureaucrats always know better how to make everyone happy.

Maybe workers will get less net income (and on a per hour as well) since employers will have to robotize or spend time training newcomers, but we can attack evil employers so who cares.

stockkid• 8 years ago

It is one thing to enact a policy and another to actually see to that it is enforced.

And I feel that it will be particularly hard to enforce the reduced working week in the South Korean culture that often puts group ahead of individual. Perhaps any movement to follow the regulation will be construed as a selfish as attempt to defy the common good of the group.

mcrae• 8 years ago

Large companies actually enforce this fairly well.

For instance, there is software on employees' computers which will hard shutdown the computer after a couple warnings. Companies which offer transport for employees have curtailed bus service from last departure at 12am to last departure at around 9pm.

It is implemented in a fairly interesting way though. Before the new regulation, the overtime policies were calculated on a weekly basis. Now it is done on monthly basis. I think this is done to allow you to 'burst' above the 52h limit in some weeks while staying in compliance on monthly basis.

Note that companies will deduct an hour a day for breaks whether you use it or not. So even a 52h week can mean 52+5=57/5=11.4h per day. So 5 straight nearly 12h days is technically not considered overtime.

aaronmdjones• 8 years ago

From the article; it's a 40-hour week plus 12 hours of overtime, so under your model, 5 straight 9-hour days is not considered overtime, and anything more is.

tomohawk• 8 years ago

The best limit for something like this would be to just move to hourly pay. If people were paid for each hour worked, it would be self limiting.

I've heard that in some countries, such as France, they actually post police outside of office parks to arrest people who work "too many hours". Makes it hard to start a business when you're limited in how much sweat equity you can put into it.

And I'm sure police have better things to do than to prevent people working.

dogruck• 8 years ago

This is bad regulation. Moving on.

8bitsrule• 8 years ago

6.5 8-hour days, huh? Welp ... guess that's a tentative start.

zavi• 8 years ago

What if I want to work a lot? For example, if I want to do something with my life and my job fulfills that need. Do they just force employers to pay overtime or am I not allowed to work beyond those hours anyways?

mrhappyunhappy4• 8 years ago

It's clear by reading comments who here has children and who does not. If work is more fun to you than spending time with your children then there's something wrong. When I see comments like "I can't imagine anything more fun than work" I tend to think about my personal reflection upon my own standing in life in relation to work, which is "if I didn't have to work, I would spend all of my time being the best dad that I can be". Lucky for me I am home all day so I count my blessings already. I work so I can have a more comfortable home for myself and my family. Sure, sometimes - a lot of times that work is fun and addicting but nothing compares to the joy of being around my son.

sneak2• 8 years ago

Children are optional and expensive, which makes them a luxury. Not everyone chooses to spend their time and money on luxuries such as children.

mrhappyunhappy4• 8 years ago

I don't make much by developer pay standards and have not found having a child as being that expensive. Food, shelter, clothing, education - all within my limits right now. I guess it depends what your standards are.

TheCoelacanth• 8 years ago

Children are optional on an individual basis, but not on a societal basis. A society that does not produce sufficient numbers of children now will collapse in a few decades when the ratio of retirees to working age adults becomes too high.

mancerayder• 8 years ago

The modern work week is a sort of (21st century version of) indentured servitude for some, and a fantastic opportunity for learning/advancement for others. Unfortunately, you don't really get to choose and must try to coax yourself into believing the latter if you really want to be an FTE. In nowhere is this more obvious in tech where over the course of 15+ years I've experienced:

"This is NOT a 9-5 role, we expect you to do what it takes to keep things running"

"You're a highly paid engineer, therefore you should expect overtime"

"This is a 24/7/365 shop, and everyone is expected to be available at all times"

"This is a startup, and everyone is expected to be available at all times"

"This is a financial company, and everyone is expected to be available at all times"

(fellow team members) "Yup, this is a tech role, what do you expect. That's just the way it is"

And so on and so forth.

My thoughts on this are:

1) Some people like working long hours, some people don't, but all must conform to the long-hours lowest common denominator. Without realizing it, we're conforming to an ideology that benefits senior management/founders/shareholders. Is that good or bad? It depends on your position in life, but let's call it what it is.

2) Employment contracts don't contain hours, so sometimes you don't know you're going to have unpaid overtime in the form of on-call or crunch time until several weeks after you've started. This is indentured servitude because while you CAN quit the job (unlike the 17th century variant), you lose health care and ability to pay your mortgage/rent.

3) Salaries are high in tech, but if you take someone making, for example, $200,000 US, which is considered a lot, and you divide it by someone working 50 hours a week, they're only making $77 an hour.

4) I decided to become a consultant, which means I make significantly more than that, I get to keep myself physically fit because I have time to do so, and I'm a much happier person as a result. Want me to work overtime? With pleasure.

5) When you're a consultant, people think twice before putting you on-call or asking you to work 50-60 hours. When you're an employee, however...

[Edit:] My philosophy in life is: you can make more money later, but you can NEVER get your time back. Keep that in mind before signing dotted lines.

* Everything I've just said is US-specific. Europeans have slightly better laws to protect against certain abuses.

msiyer4• 8 years ago

Being a workaholic is not much different from being an alcoholic. These are different forms of addiction. All workaholic societies are destroying themselves due to health complications and declining birthrates. Also, the problems of poverty and absolutely ridiculous wealth distribution patterns seem unsolvable. What more is needed to understand that the economy in its current form does not work in the long term?

South Korea has limited a working week to 52 hours, in order to stop overwork

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