Time-Off System

타임오프제

A South Korean labor policy introduced under the Lee Myung-bak administration, implemented from July 2011, that prohibited employers from paying wages to full-time union officers while allowing paid leave only for a capped number of hours on activities serving joint labor-management interests: collective bargaining, grievance handling, and workplace safety. The ban on employer-paid union officers had originally been legislated in the 1997 Trade Union Act but was deferred for 13 years. The time-off system imposed statutory ceilings calibrated to union membership size, which sharply reduced the number of full-time union representatives in large workplaces, cutting them by more than half in enterprises with over 500 members. Together with the legalization of multiple unions, it formed the core of the Lee administration's labor containment strategy.