Korean Job Discussion Forums

[rowdie3]

Hi, I need help. Got paid today and should have gotten some good overtime, but my boss says that I still came in under the 120 hours that is in my contract.

I was under the impression that the holidays (New Year's, Lunar New Year) would count as 6 hours per day (my average from a 30 hour week), but my director says, nope, we just don't get paid those days. Is this true? I could have sworn the big allure that all of those recruiters were selling me was the 14 PAID national holidays.

Also, do I have any rebute to the 5 days winter vacation, including Saturday and Sunday, so I really only get 3 days? In my books 5 paid days would mean 5 days that I usually work that I now don't have to work.

Thanks for any help you can offer,
J

[kangnamdragon]

You are on a salary, not an hourly wage. You did get paid for the holiday. You got your regular salary, and did not have to work.

Sunday cannot count as one of your 5 days. Legally, Saturday can because Saturday is still an official work day in Korea, yet that is sleazy.

[hadeshorn]

Yeah they screwed me on that as well. For lunar new year. I was spose to get 12 hours over time.. But with the days off for Lunar.. We got bucked down to 104 hours.. I am like WTF..

But I honestly cant be bothered fighting it.. I have reached that point of just being wary of future "overtime".

[sadsac]

If you worked any of the gazetted holidays through Lunar New Year, you should have been paid them as overtime or be given time in lieu, otherwise they are days off for which form part of your regular work schedule, just like holidays back home.

[panthermodern]

This is a common problem, read the wording in your contract fully.

Most contracts say X won for 120 hours. Now, a National holiday should be counted as a "normal" work day.

If you work 120 hours a month, a normal work day would be 120/workdays long.

Most months (with no holidays) a normal work day is less than 6 hours at 120 hours per month and most months have 21 or 22 work days.

This month (FEB) is a "prefect" month as it has 20 work days, exactly. Remember this year is a leap year.

Anyway, you should be credited 120/22 hours each of the 4 holidays in January.

Most hakwons forget that your "normal" work month is more than 120 days long.



Now if your contract states 6 hours/day for 120-132 hours per month a hoilday should be counted as 6 hours day.



The problem comes with a combination of Salary (won/month) vs. Wage (won/hour); salary jobs do not pay overtime in most places in the world.

Please post the exact wording of your contract and I might be able to give you better answers.

[rowdie3]

Hi, thanks for your help so far. The contract reads as follows:

The employee wil receive 5 paid vacation days in the summer (including weekend) and in the winter (including weekend) during the contract year in addition to Korean National Holidays.


If you take this sentence appart grammatically I would read it as "5 paid vacation days...in addition to national holidays" which means that everything is paid.

We have a meeting about it today. The other foreign teachers all thought the same thing. It will probably be the usual we discuss something, we end up giving in, and then our boss hints that we should now buy her lunch, and then we all go eat calbi. Fun fun.

[hellofaniceguy]

School owners in korea are not the most trustworthy bunch around.
Holiday pay? You can bet one thing, students pay for a full month every month even if the month has five holidays and the school owners is not given the students/parents a refund for classes missed due to holidays! But, they are not paying you, the teacher for the holiday! You just get it off.

[kangnamdragon]

I still think you are confusing a salary job with an hourly wage job. Salary jobs do not give overtime for hours which you would have worked on a holiday if it not been a holiday. Overtime is only for time which you actually work above and beyond the call of duty. It is not for overtime which you would have worked if you had not had a day off.

This is the way it has always been in Korea. It is not just your boss. I don't see why you would deserve overtime when you already got the day off.

[Son Deureo!]

Actually, in all of the wage jobs I ever worked in the U.S., paid holiday time never counted towards overtime, at least so far as the time-and-a-half bonus is concerned.

[J.B. Clamence]

Yeah, it kinda sucks the way that works. They have you working overtime one week, and then the next week it's a "paid" holiday, but the only thing the holiday really does is sap your overtime. What really sucks is when the boss knows there's a week off that month, so he deliberately gives you lots of extra hours for the weeks you're working that month, knowing full well he won't have to pay you overtime for your insane workload because "the holiday vacuum" will pull you just below your 120.

Yeah, jobs in the U.S. don't pay potential overtime for holidays either, but in the U.S. overtime is usually calculated by the week, not by the month, so if you put in a lot of hours one particular week, you get your overtime for that week, even if there is a holiday the following week.

[Squid]

The contract says 5 days paid, plus National holidays... you get squat for not having worked the national holiday. The National holiday is not paid. Got it?

[kangnamdragon]

[Squid]

Kangnam, I appreciate your point, but the deciding factor would have to extra payment for overtime... OP gets it if he works overtime. A salary includes excess hours worked. That makes it hourly pay right?

[Gord]

[kangnamdragon]

When I was typing my post I was thinking, "I wish Gord would answer this one."