Time-Off System

Definition

In the time-off system a worker who receives wages from the employer, that is, a working-hours-exempt officer, may perform union duties without loss of wages, within a ceiling on exempted hours set in light of the number of members in each workplace. Permitted duties are consultation and bargaining with the employer, grievance handling, workplace safety activity, and union maintenance and administrative work for sound labor relations. A collective agreement or consent exceeding the ceiling is void to that extent. A full-time union officer is one who, under a collective agreement or with the employer's consent, does not provide the contractual work and devotes himself or herself solely to union affairs.

History

The Trade Union Act enacted in March 1997 denied any employer obligation to pay full-time union officers and made such payment an unfair labor practice. Its origin lay in the demand by employers' organizations, alongside the permissibility of multiple unions, at the 1996 Labor-Management Relations Reform Committee. Given the specificity of existing payment practices, the ban was deferred until 31 December 2001, then again to after 2007 by the 2001 amendment and to 31 December 2009 by the amendment of 30 December 2006. Following a tripartite agreement in late 2009, the National Assembly voted the following January for Act No. 9930 (amended 1 January 2010, in force 1 July 2010), introducing the hours-exemption scheme: from 1 July 2010 employer payment to full-time officers was in principle prohibited, while union activity within a set ceiling alone was treated as paid. Act No. 17864 of 5 January 2021 (in force 6 July 2021) deleted the ban on employer payment and allowed a worker engaged in union affairs during a full-time period to be paid by the employer or the union; the former Article 24(5), which banned industrial action aimed at demanding or securing such payment, was also deleted. The hours-exemption ceilings and the rule voiding agreements above them were retained.

Ceilings and operation

Exemption ceilings are set by membership size (for example, 1,000 hours for up to 49 members, 2,000 hours for up to 99). On 1 May 2010 the Working Hours Exemption Deliberation Committee, composed of five members each recommended by labor, management and government, deliberated and resolved the ceilings, and the Minister of Employment and Labor gave notice of them on 14 May 2010. Labor and management autonomously set exemption levels within the notified ceilings, and after a June 2013 adjustment the revised notice applied from 1 July 2013.

Controversy and rulings

In its full-bench decision of 29 May 2014 in case 2010Hun-Ma606, the Constitutional Court held that the scheme, by making the union itself bear the cost of full-time officers in principle, contributes to securing union autonomy and independence while seeking to protect and support workplace union activity to a certain level, and that the legislative judgment to have the exemption ceilings deliberated by the committee and fixed by ministerial notice had a rational basis. It further held that, since the hours-exemption scheme was introduced as a compromise to the payment ban, the arrangement did not conflict with Article 2(1) of ILO Convention No. 135 on protection and facilities for workers' representatives in the undertaking. The complainants had sought a review of constitutionality on 28 September 2010; the constitutional complaint was dismissed (partly rejected as inadmissible). Separately, the government explained that in amending the Trade Union Act to ratify core ILO conventions it deleted the payment ban but centered operation on the hours-exemption scheme, which the ILO also recognizes, so that little changes in practice; the principle that pay for those engaged in union affairs must come from the union's own finances remains, and where the employer pays, the person is regarded as a working-hours-exempt officer regardless of the name used. Judicial judgments continue over pay and allowances for such officers, including whether overtime allowances may be paid and how exempted hours are allocated within a collective agreement.

Workplace results

Three years after introduction, a 2013 survey by the two major union confederations of unions at 306 workplaces, titled Survey on the Introduction of the Working Hours Exemption Scheme and Changes in Labor Relations, found that full-time officers at large enterprise unions with 500 or more members fell by more than half and that only 12.1 percent of unions raised dues (87.9 percent did not). Civil-society and external solidarity activity contracted most (13.3 percent reported a sharp decrease, 24.7 percent a decrease). Full-time officers fell on average from 3.8 to 2.5 while part-time officers rose from 1 to 1.3. Some 75.9 percent said government intervention had deepened and 77.2 percent that time-off had a negative effect on day-to-day union activity. The most common arrangement, 26.5 percent, was for the union merely to notify the company in advance before using time-off; but substantial numbers reported needing to submit an activity plan in advance (14.3 percent) or to obtain the company's prior consent (20.6 percent), leaving room for conflict over the scope of time-off and the treatment of full-time officers.

Distinctions

The time-off system derives from arrangements in the United States, Britain and elsewhere that accommodate union officers who keep working for the company while being allowed exceptionally to attend to union business connected to joint labor-management matters such as labor-management consultation. In Korea it was introduced to correct the long-standing practice of enterprise-level unions and employers bearing the pay of full-time union officers. Because it regulates that pay question by law rather than leaving it to labor and management, it has been a focus of debate over state intervention and union autonomy. Labor has assessed that workplace union activity contracted sharply after the 2010 amendment to the Trade Union Act.