Top Court Clarifies Holiday Pay Rules for Every-Other-Day Workers (Image courtesy of Yonhap)
SEOUL, Oct. 10 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s Supreme Court has ruled that employees working every other day, such as taxi drivers on alternating shifts, are entitled to only half of the standard weekly holiday allowance, marking a significant clarification in how labor laws apply to nonstandard work schedules.
In a decision announced in August, the court overturned a lower ruling in favor of taxi drivers from a company in Jinju, South Gyeongsang Province, and sent the case back to the Busan High Court for retrial.
The key issue was how to calculate the “weekly holiday allowance” — a paid day off guaranteed under Korean labor law to employees who work at least 15 hours per week and complete their scheduled workdays.
The lower court had ruled that because the drivers worked eight-hour shifts on alternate days, their paid weekly rest should amount to eight hours. But the Supreme Court disagreed, saying the allowance should reflect the difference in total weekly workdays.
“While the weekly holiday allowance is based on an employee’s average daily working hours, it must also account for the number of scheduled workdays per week,” the court said. Applying the same standard to workers with fewer workdays, it added, would create “an unreasonable situation” where someone working fewer days would receive the same weekly allowance as a full-time employee.
The justices concluded that for employees with less than five working days a week, the total weekly working hours should be converted to a five-day basis. In this case, the drivers’ average weekly hours were 23.78, translating into 4.75 paid rest hours — roughly half of what full-time employees receive.
The court also upheld a previous finding that an earlier labor agreement reducing official working hours — a move intended to sidestep minimum wage obligations — was invalid. The company and its labor union had shortened the official workday to reduce wage burdens after a 2010 amendment to the Minimum Wage Act excluded certain income components from wage calculations.
However, the Supreme Court reaffirmed its 2019 precedent that such contractual reductions are unlawful if not accompanied by actual changes in working conditions.
The ruling establishes a new precedent for calculating weekly paid leave for irregular or alternating-shift workers — balancing fairness between part-time and full-time employees while reaffirming the legal limits on wage manipulation.
M. H. Lee (mhlee@koreabizwire.com)
