6 ms·

South Korea U-turns on 69-hour working week after youth backlash

63 points by halabarouma 4y ago

Khelavaster 4y ago
Can't blame them. This was very ill-advised. People need daily rest for health..
- mrtweetyhack 4y ago
  [dead]
rektide 4y ago
Not super defending this, but it is a maximum hours allowed. Up from 52, which to be fair I think many folks do work, all too regularly (probably many putting in unpaid labor beyond that!). I can imagine being stuck out in nowhere on a job site with some mission to do and being told, no, I have to stop working, and not being pleased about it. Some things make sense to just hurry up and get done with. But that's not about anything we'd expect folks to sustain.
- viraptor 4y ago
  The 52h were "Democratic party that limits the working week to 52 hours: 40 of regular work plus 12 of overtime." That gives you an opportunity to effectively pull an all nighter in an emergency once a week. I really don't see why any more would be allowed regularly. That would be a plain management failure.
  - tekla 4y ago
    Oh man, management failure in Korea? It would be a management failure to NOT be working workers to the legal limit and then some.
- notyourav 4y ago
  In USA people can make these calls with much autonomy. In Korea, leaving before your boss is hard to do. In Germany working hours are hard capped and that’s absolutely normal to stop working when your weekly allowance is over. Some things make sense only because that’s your cultural normal.
  - genocidicbunny 4y ago
    > In USA people can make these calls with much autonomy. Not really. The same dynamics play out in the US quite often. Not uncommon to be seen as slacking off if you consistently leave earlier than the boss, even if all your work is done.
  - k0k0r0 4y ago
    Yeah, Germany... For the current project I have so much overtime, needed to stop writting down my working hours officially and only record them off-the-record. This is with a mutual silent agreement with my employer to afterwards simply not show up for some time as soon as the project is done. Because... Laws. We are afraid to even talk about it. But to be fair, my employer wouldn't mind to let the project fail (It may very well fail anyway, btw). I am doing it voluntarily. He's not at fault at all, except for maybe allowing me to do it. I just love working on the project and try to get it done somehow, against all odds. Nevertheless, German laws now make something shady out of it. On the other hand, this is not the first time I am doing so utterly stupid and partly self-distructive shit at work. But for sure it is the last time. I am never ever doing this amount of overtime again in my life. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind occasional overtime. But that's simply to much for too long now. I will barely go to work for several months in a row just to get rid of all that overtime, to give you an impression. (I know there is professions where people literally die, if people stop working similar hours. I am not really forced to do that so I am not complaining.) I am glad my significant other is fine with it, since I barely caried any other responsibilities I should have... for a long time now. Edit: I am not sure if there is actually special laws in Germany to avoid mutually agreed overtime. But there is for sure some rules where I work. Our company has a kind of special situation and strange laws surprisingly apply to us. Also it important to mention that if low performance and mistakes because of overworked employees happen nothing terrible will happen. You wouldn't want to have your medical devise be programmed by some sleep deprived idiot, but that is not the situation our company is in. If projects fail, nothing of importance is at risk. Many projects are of high risk and failing simply belongs to the business.
- crossroadsguy 4y ago
  You are super defending it. Maximum hours allowed is what protects, not minimum hours. It’s already a hierarchical nightmare in South Korea. Underlings often keep their head bowed and do not make eye contact with their bosses. Speaking from first hand experience - for months.
  - chikichaka 4y ago
    Having a job and working in korea is so toxic.
- sn41 4y ago
  > I can imagine being stuck out in nowhere on a job site with some mission to do and being told, no, I have to stop working, and not being pleased about it. Some things make sense to just hurry up and get done with. This is exactly as intended. Especially if you are doing hazardous work that requires alertness, e.g. operating heavy machinery. The standard solution is to get shift workers.
  - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
    The problem is that this sort of "our one size fits all, we know better, peasant" thinking is that while it does reduce abuse by employers that constantly put employees in these situations it also fucks good employers and employees who wind up in these situations rarely and by happenstance and for whom just dealing is the all things considered best solution and the more extreme the rules the more of the latter group they hit. Of course one can always make some useless trite quip about how any situation like that could have been prevented had more resources been invested in preventing it ahead of time but at the scale of an entire economy this becomes stupid and a waste of resources as returns diminish.
cute_boi 4y ago
And, the government has gall to complain why people aren't happy and aren't producing babies.
kylehotchkiss 4y ago
69 hour work weeks!! This is a county that needs to liberalize their immigration policy to reduce the pressure on their citizens. People deserve better lives than 10 hours daily with no weekends or 12 hours daily with only Sunday off.
- Proven 4y ago
  [dead]
- lyubalesya 4y ago
  Without immigration, they will be forced to fix their broken system that has resulted in far-below-replacement fertility. With immigration, they can persist with this soul-crushing work schedule, while their native population dwindles. There is not some fixed amount of work that needs to be done (in Korea specifically, that cannot be outsourced), and Korea simply doesn't have enough people to do it. In fact, if that were the case, then workers would have the advantage in negotiations, and could paradoxically bargain for better working conditions.
- rayiner 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - 4gotunameagain 4y ago
    I know, right? Or because a constant flux of immigrants is a totally sustainable situation.. We somehow need to be able to view immigration and its effects through a lens of reasoning, and not passionate politics. If you suggest that maybe, you know, a lot of immigration or immigration of uneducated workers is bad, automatically you are somehow far right.
    - runnerup 4y ago
      Seems to have worked fine for the USA government and its constituents for the past 300 years. As long as you ignore the plight of indigenous populations, most of the big problems have been caused by the incumbent populations, not the immigrants.
chikichaka 4y ago
As korean, President Yoon is anti korea and villan of korea. Everything of korea is getting worse and worse by him.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  As someone living in Japan, I can't comment on his domestic policies (except this 69-hour proposal, which was utterly stupid), but at least he isn't like his predecessor, constantly vilifying Japan and trying to cozy up with NK. Japan and SK should be strong allies against the nearby dictatorial regimes, and the leftists in SK have been doing everything they can to ruin SK's relationship with Japan.
  - chikichaka 4y ago
    Because there is no rightist in korea to be honest. Most of Korean do not think like that. President Yoon and his father studied at Japan. Getting an apology from Japan's sexual slavery victims for the Japanese imperial army, it is not vilifying Japan.
    - midoridensha 4y ago
      Japan has issued lots of apologies over the decades for that, and paid reparations. The issue was settled back in the 60s. It's time to move on. The left wingers just keep dragging it up so they can distract the voters from their own failures in governance.
      - chikichaka 4y ago
        Totally false. President Park even did not notice exactly information to victims from agreement between SK and JP in 2015. They always have been trying to hide information and ignore victim's opinion.
        arroz 4y ago
        Man, this is an 80 year old issue. Move on already. The people that did that aren’t even alive anymore. And their offspring have a totally different government from the one that did the atrocities.
CommanderData 4y ago
Ontop of this doesn't South Korea have abysmal pay and high cost of living compared to nearer countries.
- japaneseminisub 4y ago
  And extremely aggressive taxation.

63 points by halabarouma 4y ago

Khelavaster 4y ago

Can't blame them. This was very ill-advised. People need daily rest for health..

mrtweetyhack 4y ago
[dead]

rektide 4y ago

Not super defending this, but it is a maximum hours allowed. Up from 52, which to be fair I think many folks do work, all too regularly (probably many putting in unpaid labor beyond that!). I can imagine being stuck out in nowhere on a job site with some mission to do and being told, no, I have to stop working, and not being pleased about it. Some things make sense to just hurry up and get done with. But that's not about anything we'd expect folks to sustain.

viraptor 4y ago
The 52h were "Democratic party that limits the working week to 52 hours: 40 of regular work plus 12 of overtime." That gives you an opportunity to effectively pull an all nighter in an emergency once a week. I really don't see why any more would be allowed regularly. That would be a plain management failure.
- tekla 4y ago
  Oh man, management failure in Korea? It would be a management failure to NOT be working workers to the legal limit and then some.
notyourav 4y ago
In USA people can make these calls with much autonomy. In Korea, leaving before your boss is hard to do. In Germany working hours are hard capped and that’s absolutely normal to stop working when your weekly allowance is over. Some things make sense only because that’s your cultural normal.
- genocidicbunny 4y ago
  > In USA people can make these calls with much autonomy. Not really. The same dynamics play out in the US quite often. Not uncommon to be seen as slacking off if you consistently leave earlier than the boss, even if all your work is done.
- k0k0r0 4y ago
  Yeah, Germany... For the current project I have so much overtime, needed to stop writting down my working hours officially and only record them off-the-record. This is with a mutual silent agreement with my employer to afterwards simply not show up for some time as soon as the project is done. Because... Laws. We are afraid to even talk about it. But to be fair, my employer wouldn't mind to let the project fail (It may very well fail anyway, btw). I am doing it voluntarily. He's not at fault at all, except for maybe allowing me to do it. I just love working on the project and try to get it done somehow, against all odds. Nevertheless, German laws now make something shady out of it. On the other hand, this is not the first time I am doing so utterly stupid and partly self-distructive shit at work. But for sure it is the last time. I am never ever doing this amount of overtime again in my life. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind occasional overtime. But that's simply to much for too long now. I will barely go to work for several months in a row just to get rid of all that overtime, to give you an impression. (I know there is professions where people literally die, if people stop working similar hours. I am not really forced to do that so I am not complaining.) I am glad my significant other is fine with it, since I barely caried any other responsibilities I should have... for a long time now. Edit: I am not sure if there is actually special laws in Germany to avoid mutually agreed overtime. But there is for sure some rules where I work. Our company has a kind of special situation and strange laws surprisingly apply to us. Also it important to mention that if low performance and mistakes because of overworked employees happen nothing terrible will happen. You wouldn't want to have your medical devise be programmed by some sleep deprived idiot, but that is not the situation our company is in. If projects fail, nothing of importance is at risk. Many projects are of high risk and failing simply belongs to the business.
crossroadsguy 4y ago
You are super defending it. Maximum hours allowed is what protects, not minimum hours. It’s already a hierarchical nightmare in South Korea. Underlings often keep their head bowed and do not make eye contact with their bosses. Speaking from first hand experience - for months.
- chikichaka 4y ago
  Having a job and working in korea is so toxic.
sn41 4y ago
> I can imagine being stuck out in nowhere on a job site with some mission to do and being told, no, I have to stop working, and not being pleased about it. Some things make sense to just hurry up and get done with. This is exactly as intended. Especially if you are doing hazardous work that requires alertness, e.g. operating heavy machinery. The standard solution is to get shift workers.
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago
  The problem is that this sort of "our one size fits all, we know better, peasant" thinking is that while it does reduce abuse by employers that constantly put employees in these situations it also fucks good employers and employees who wind up in these situations rarely and by happenstance and for whom just dealing is the all things considered best solution and the more extreme the rules the more of the latter group they hit. Of course one can always make some useless trite quip about how any situation like that could have been prevented had more resources been invested in preventing it ahead of time but at the scale of an entire economy this becomes stupid and a waste of resources as returns diminish.

cute_boi 4y ago

And, the government has gall to complain why people aren't happy and aren't producing babies.

kylehotchkiss 4y ago

69 hour work weeks!! This is a county that needs to liberalize their immigration policy to reduce the pressure on their citizens. People deserve better lives than 10 hours daily with no weekends or 12 hours daily with only Sunday off.

Proven 4y ago
[dead]
lyubalesya 4y ago
Without immigration, they will be forced to fix their broken system that has resulted in far-below-replacement fertility. With immigration, they can persist with this soul-crushing work schedule, while their native population dwindles. There is not some fixed amount of work that needs to be done (in Korea specifically, that cannot be outsourced), and Korea simply doesn't have enough people to do it. In fact, if that were the case, then workers would have the advantage in negotiations, and could paradoxically bargain for better working conditions.
rayiner 4y ago
[flagged]
- 4gotunameagain 4y ago
  I know, right? Or because a constant flux of immigrants is a totally sustainable situation.. We somehow need to be able to view immigration and its effects through a lens of reasoning, and not passionate politics. If you suggest that maybe, you know, a lot of immigration or immigration of uneducated workers is bad, automatically you are somehow far right.
  - runnerup 4y ago
    Seems to have worked fine for the USA government and its constituents for the past 300 years. As long as you ignore the plight of indigenous populations, most of the big problems have been caused by the incumbent populations, not the immigrants.

chikichaka 4y ago

As korean, President Yoon is anti korea and villan of korea. Everything of korea is getting worse and worse by him.

midoridensha 4y ago
As someone living in Japan, I can't comment on his domestic policies (except this 69-hour proposal, which was utterly stupid), but at least he isn't like his predecessor, constantly vilifying Japan and trying to cozy up with NK. Japan and SK should be strong allies against the nearby dictatorial regimes, and the leftists in SK have been doing everything they can to ruin SK's relationship with Japan.
- chikichaka 4y ago
  Because there is no rightist in korea to be honest. Most of Korean do not think like that. President Yoon and his father studied at Japan. Getting an apology from Japan's sexual slavery victims for the Japanese imperial army, it is not vilifying Japan.
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    Japan has issued lots of apologies over the decades for that, and paid reparations. The issue was settled back in the 60s. It's time to move on. The left wingers just keep dragging it up so they can distract the voters from their own failures in governance.
    - chikichaka 4y ago
      Totally false. President Park even did not notice exactly information to victims from agreement between SK and JP in 2015. They always have been trying to hide information and ignore victim's opinion.
      - arroz 4y ago
        Man, this is an 80 year old issue. Move on already. The people that did that aren’t even alive anymore. And their offspring have a totally different government from the one that did the atrocities.

CommanderData 4y ago

Ontop of this doesn't South Korea have abysmal pay and high cost of living compared to nearer countries.

japaneseminisub 4y ago
And extremely aggressive taxation.