Welcome to BASE21

By Kim Seung-hak, Asian Workers News Staff reporter

Can 40 hours work a week will be realized in July 2002?
Most Korean workers are expecting a 5-day workweek that will start in July this year and reduce working hours. However, all workers might not benefit from the reduced working hours. And if the government initiative is passed, small sized companies where undocumented workers work, will have nothing to do with it.

If using irregular workers, migrant workers and unregistered workers closes the gap, caused by only 40 hours of work, the basic concept of sharing jobs will be faded. Koreas long working hours is famous internationally. With the boom in construction in the 1970s, with the exception of eating and sleeping, Korean workers worked non stop on Middle Eastern building sites.

No Chang Gyu, a 44-year-old welder, had worked on construction sites in Oman and Bahrain for 2 years. He says, " I worked from 7 am to 10 pm every day." He recalls those times, saying that monthly working hours averaged between 500 and 600hours when the extra hours of overtime, night shift and weekend work are included. He added that the attitude was to work hard because they all knew that," we didn't come to enjoy it here."

Long working hours Didn't only exist on overseas construction sites. Mr. Lee, a 31-year-old mechanic, works for Hyundai Heavy Industries, a world-class shipping company. He has worked there since the end of 1981. He said, "We had night shift and all-night work almost every day until the labor union came along." We arrived at 7:30 in the morning and left at 7:30 in the afternoon at the earliest, he added. He recalled those times saying, "Everybody was the same at that time and we worked all day long, except for when we ate and slept."

The example of the long hours worked by Korean workers in the past is often used for irregular workers and migrant workers in small companies in the present. In the case of undocumented workers working for companies without labor unions, they are more likely to be pressured into long working hours.

Long working hours threaten the health of workers. Mr. Lee recalled that many coworkers were injured and died at work in 1980s. Long hours working with metal or chemicals can easily cause accidents. In the case of harmful working sites, such as on scaffolding, workers should not work any longer than six or seven hours. And during rest hours, workers should be away from work site to do so. This is the only way to avoid accidents and work related illnesses.

Long working hours also destroy the relationship between coworkers. There are so many workers in Korea who seem to live for the company. They come to work early and leave late.
They only see their children asleep and could not see them at all for up to a month. However, long working hours are disappearing in Korea, thanks to the fighting of labor unions. It still threatens the life of migrant workers, irregular workers and day workers though.

The legacy of the long working hours and industrial illness of the 1980s could be reformed with the implementation of a 5-day working week and the inclusion of small companies.

On Dec. 25, 2001, the Statistics Office announced that the average working hours for a Korean in 2000 was 47.5 hours per week. This was reduced by as much as 24 minutes from the previous year. We expect that the average working hours of 2002, announced at the end of 2003, shall be 40 hours, over 5 days and without working condition decline.