South Korea Cuts Its Work Limit From 68 Hours a Week To 52 (cnn.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: South Korea has lowered its maximum working hours from 68 hours a week to 52 hours. The legislation, which went into effect Sunday, received overwhelming support in the National Assembly in an effort to limit the time employees spend on the job. South Korea has the third highest number of hours worked of 37 countries tracked by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, with the average person in South Korea working about 2,024 hours in 2017, or approximately 38.9 hours a week.

Comments

Great idea

[cmdr_klarg]

Now let's do that here in the US. No exceptions. If the job requires more than 50 hours to accomplish then you need more people doing it. If you can't afford to have more people doing the job then you shouldn't be in business.

Re:Great idea

[alvinrod]

What if I'm an Uber driver or otherwise self-employed? Am I not free to make decisions about my work schedule for myself? What if I'm a painter, writer, or engaged in some other form of creative activity? Must I stop doing what others might consider a leisure activity if I derive income from it? Also, what stops someone else from deciding at some point in the future that anything more than 30 hours per week is sinful and what if I can't afford to maintain my lifestyle based on those limitations?

Re:Great idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Right. No exceptions. If you're a firefighter, and you hit your 50 hour mark and the forest fire that has every person in the area working on it is still burning, walk away and let it burn.

Re:Great idea

[PopeRatzo]

Huh...I didn't realize Joe Stalin posted on /.

I know they look alike, but that's actually Ayn Rand. It's a common mistake.

Re:Great idea

[_Sharp'r_]

It's for "businesses with more than 300 employees, state-run agencies and government offices".

From the same article:

Prior to the new law, South Koreans worked some 300 more hours yearly compared to workers in countries such as the US or Italy, and some 700 more hours yearly to those in countries such as Germany and Norway.

Studies have shown that the country's long working hours do not necessarily result in higher labour productivity. In 2014, South Koreans' labour productivity was US$31.90 per hour, significantly lower than the OECD average, which was US$49.

Of course, then there's the other side of the coin:

Not every South Korean is pleased with the change. A survey by a local employment portal site showed that 55.2 per cent of the 905 South Korean workers who responded saying that they are concerned about having to work overtime anyway after the law revision - meaning more than 12 hours weekly - but won't be eligible to receive overtime pay.

Before the change, South Koreans worked 52 normal hours and 16 hours of overtime, and were entitled to overtime pay for at least 16 hours a week.

"What if you prefer money or work over life?" said a 33-year-old office worker living in Seongnam. "I think those who want to work more and thereby make more money should have the right to do so. What if you can't make your ends meet unless you work overtime? I feel like for some people in this country, this law revision is rather irresponsible."

Re:Great idea

[dgatwood]

Wouldn't work in software since there's such a lack of programmers compared to demand and programming has such a huge communication overhead that it's more efficient to work more hours than add more people.

Actually, all the research I've seen in this area says the opposite — that you can work maybe one 60-hour week before you start to lose productivity, and over the long term, you're no better off working 60 hours than 30 hours. Your productivity actually goes negative at around 45 hours, IIRC, and diminishing returns begin at 25 or 30 hours. I forget the exact numbers, but that's in the right ballpark. So you're almost always better off adding more people than working more hours, unless the need is very short-term.

The only companies that do well by forcing people to work crazy hours are game developers, and that's because they know they can burn out one group of devs and move on to the next set of suckers. For everybody else, it is generally self-defeating.

Re:Great idea

[bsolar]

I guess the “no exception” was meant in the sense “no category of worker should be exhempt from the 50/w limit”.

This doesn’t mean you cannot have exeptions to the 50/w limit in some weeks even if your category must comply with it: usually regulations take into account and allowfor emergencies, require proper compensation and might impose fines if overtime work is found to be structural and not exceptional as it should be.

Re:Great idea

[Gavagai80]

The only companies that do well by forcing people to work crazy hours are game developers

The biggest problem is the many, many companies (though maybe not many software companies) that make people work more hours without paying them -- by classifying most of their employees as "management" with salaried positions, no matter how obviously they're not actually managers. There are millions of people forced to work 70 hour weeks for the same pay they'd get for a 40 hour week.

Re:Great idea

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Not all processes can be sped up by adding more people. Nine women can't make a baby in one month. Some coding projects slow down significantly if you add more people.

Re:Great idea

[Anonymous Coward]

The only companies that do well by forcing people to work crazy hours are game developers, and that's because they know they can burn out one group of devs and move on to the next set of suckers. For everybody else, it is generally self-defeating.

Those aren't NEARLY the only companies. Junior invetsment bankers routinely work 90 hour weeks for 2-3 years on end. i understand that it's no better in law, and Doctors have it EVEN WORSE.

Just think about that: you go to a hospital for a car accident at night, and you're getting a doctor who's been on shift for 24 straight hours.

Re:Great idea

[thePsychologist]

You don't even need research to see this.

In a two-year span as a student I once graphed every page I read each week. This was in a technical subject where I went through each line and verified that it was true, so it wasn't casual reading.

The graph I got at the end was fascinating: it was like a sinusoidal graph with a period of about 2-3 weeks. After that much intense study time, I just lost the mental energy to be productive. Over a period of two years, my cumulative learning graph was pretty much exactly a straight line. In other words, constant learning rate.

No matter what you do, you're going to have a certain amount of productivity, and it's good to know your limits and when to take a break.

Re:Great idea

[alvinrod]

I'm replying to a person who stated "no exceptions." Rules with "no exceptions" are often quite bad. I prefer not to be punished for someone else's lack of imagination.

Re:Great idea

[dgatwood]

The only companies that do well by forcing people to work crazy hours are game developers, and that's because they know they can burn out one group of devs and move on to the next set of suckers. For everybody else, it is generally self-defeating.

Those aren't NEARLY the only companies. Junior invetsment bankers routinely work 90 hour weeks for 2-3 years on end. i understand that it's no better in law, and Doctors have it EVEN WORSE.

My entire reply was in the context of its parent, which was about programming jobs. Junior investment bankers and junior lawyers have entirely different points of diminishing returns, because the type of work is entirely different.

Software engineering is, despite having a technical component, first and foremost a creative job. Creative jobs give you the fewest useful hours per week. You can push paper and look up pertinent case law and do financial analysis and background research on random stocks for a lot more hours than you can usefully write code. Worse, because programming is so creative, you often don't realize how much your quality is suffering when you write crazy amounts of code for long periods of time, which means things start to go wrong, and nobody can explain why, so they decide that it's a crunch, and everybody has to work longer hours. This generally results in a death spiral.

Re: Great idea

[orlanz]

Having done tax defense (a little bit like legal), programming, and financial work; sorry you are way off. Finance was the hardest one to do. Far too much stress with way too many highs and drops. Burn out happens very fast some days. Legal gets really hard to keep an idea straight figuring out what precedent is in scope.

As for "creativity" in programming. There isn't much. Most problems have already been solved and that is the bulk of the work. Yes there is still creativity that sets this solution apart from the others. But I see more creativity in essays, and poems.

Re: Great idea

[dgatwood]

As a lawyer, you are really, really wrong on that. Legal writing is also a creative process and diminishing returns kick in pretty quick.

But I'd be shocked if that was the majority of what a new lawyer ended up doing, unless by writing, you mean crafting nearly pure boilerplate contracts and wills. The hard stuff shouldn't be going to people just starting out.

Re: Great idea

[q_e_t]

Unless a task can be broken down into trivial chunks, adding people doesn't always work. But to some extent that is a function of the design of the task, allocation of work, and organisation of teams. It can be effective to add people if those preceeding things are true, or can be made true.

Re:Great idea

[q_e_t]

Exceptions are potentially loopholes, so you have to be careful what the exceptions are.

Re:Great idea

[Luckyo]

For average person, yes. This however ignores the well documented fact that in any given organisation, most of the productive work isn't done by the average worker. It's done by the hyper productive outliers. Rule of the thumb is that in any given organisation, half of productive work is done by the square root of total workers.

And these are the people who go to be high grade specialists and CEOs, can manage to live on 6 hours sleep a day and work essentially all of their waking hours. For decades. There's not many of them, but if you even for a moment pretend that "average worker" is the person who is in any way representative of people who a keeping the company running, your company will be bankrupt within a couple of years after you lose those hyper productive people who will chafe under the limitations. And who have all the opportunities to find another place of employment.

So while the limitation makes sense for the average worker, you always need the way to allow the hyper productive individuals to work the way they do. Otherwise, you'll lose them, and that is literally how huge companies that are currently doing well go bankrupt in a few years.

Re:Great idea

[wisnoskij]

Yes, work outputs goes down after so many hours, but programming output also goes down the more people you add to a project.

Re:Great idea

[AmiMoJo]

They need a comprehensive overhaul of labour laws. 37.5 hour standard working week, legal maximum of 48 hours.

At least 25 days holiday based on that 37.5 hours/week, if you work more or less then holiday time scales by the same amount. Regular overtime increases your holiday allowance. Employer must allow you to take all of it every year, and any kind of punishment for taking it or benefit for not taking it (bonuses, promotions etc.) is illegal.

Strong and free-for-the-employee tribunals to oversee it all and resolve conflicts.

Re:Great idea

[AmiMoJo]

Always seemed kind of insane to me that we want doctors and lawyers to work ridiculous hours in high stress jobs, when the consequences of them making mistakes are relatively severe.

Seems like if you have someone working 60 hours a week that's an indication that you actually need two people.

Re:Great idea

[tehcyder]

Always seemed kind of insane to me that we want doctors and lawyers to work ridiculous hours in high stress jobs, when the consequences of them making mistakes are relatively severe.

Seems like if you have someone working 60 hours a week that's an indication that you actually need two people.

I think the theory for doctors and lawyers is that you have to be extremely dedicated and able to work well under stress, and so making you work long hours while you are training is a way of weeding out the ones who are just dilettantes.

Utter tosh, but that seems to be how it works.

Re:Great idea

[Alan R Light]

IIRC, negative returns start at about 55 hours - so no company in their right mind would regularly schedule workers for more than 55 hours per week if they want to maximize profit. Of course short term emergencies are an exception, and there are a few workaholics who are exceptions, especially in fields which require a rare level of proficiency. But employers ignore the basic facts at their own peril.

Re:Great idea

[Alan R Light]

In the U.S., the medical cartel deliberately restricts the number of people who can become doctors in order to justify high salaries. They do this by restricting the number of students who can attend medical schools in the U.S., and by introducing a sort of hazing to reduce the number of people who want to become doctors. Some Americans avoid this by going to medical schools established by American doctors overseas precisely to deal with this problem, but the medical cartel takes other measures to make life difficult for these doctors. For instance, doctors educated in the United States are paid a modest salary during their residency, while American doctors educated to the same standards overseas are required to PAY a similar amount annually during their residency.

Of course the population has grown even as the supply of doctors has remained about the same, so we see two competing interests: one side wants to provide more doctors and reduce costs, so we import doctors from countries that already have too few (and these doctors are far more likely to cheat our healthcare system than locally born doctors), and introduce programs to let nurses do more work traditionally done by doctors, while at the same time we restrict the number of doctors educated in the United States and make it difficult for foreigners or even American doctors educated elsewhere to practice in the United States. We insist that only doctors can prescribe medication, although there are many, many countries that don't require doctor approval and do very well with that. One side wants to restrict the number of doctors to increase salaries, but as a side effect overworks doctors, while the other side insists on cutting costs and in doing so often increases them. The system is a complete mess, but it is very profitable - at the expense of the public. This monopoly can only exist because of government enforcement.

Re:Great idea

[Green Mountain Bot]

True, but it's also pretty close to the amount of actual work you get out of the average 40 hour full-time worker.

Re:Great idea

[Green Mountain Bot]

We insist that only doctors can prescribe medication, although there are many, many countries that don't require doctor approval and do very well with that.

But our system prevents people from prescribing highly addictive painkillers willy-nilly!

What's that you say?

Re:Great idea

[Opportunist]

I work to live, I don't live to work. I pity you if you define yourself by what and how much your work, you must be a very, very sad being.

Re:Great idea

[Opportunist]

Fuck you. I get more headhunters calling me than I can shake a stick at. You let me work the hours I want when I want or you can kiss my ass on my way out.

Treat me like shit, expect to be treated like shit.

Re: Great idea

[Opportunist]

I really pity you. A life where you got nothing left but work must suck... have you considered getting professional help?

Re:Great idea

[Opportunist]

Just think about that: you go to a hospital for a car accident at night, and you're getting a doctor who's been on shift for 24 straight hours.

Fortunately not, but then again, in my country the average survival rate in ERs is higher than in the US. Wonder why.

Re:Great idea

[Opportunist]

I prefer to take it now. Don't like it? Kiss my ass on my way out to the interview with the next guy that wants me.

Ya know, me having a VERY rare and VERY high demand skill set kinda means that you can kiss my ass. If I let you. But then again, why would I even want to work for assholes like you?

Re:Great idea

[Opportunist]

Mostly because those people are being added long, long after it would have been necessary. Of course you cannot sensibly train new personnel when you're already hitting an emergency, you can only do it when you actually have time to train new people.

Unfortunately management is too stupid to notice it and too stubborn to listen to those that do notice it.

Less than Tesla

[110010001000]

Tesla is working 12 hour shifts in open air tents in order to push product out the door. At least South Korea has some sense.

Re:Less than Tesla

[DontBeAMoran]

12 hours shifts but still limited by law to a maximum number of hours per week, meaning they work less than five days per week.

Re:Less than Tesla

[110010001000]

What loss? The stock is down 12% over the last 12 months and was down over 7% again today. The shorts have "made" $1.3 billion in the last week alone.

38.9 hours a week. ? Thats weak

[rojash]

We here in the US work 40 hours per week. So there !!

Re:38.9 hours a week. ? Thats weak

[Anonymous Coward]

I show up for 40 hours a week. They get about 5 hours of work out of me, if they're lucky.

Re:38.9 hours a week. ? Thats weak

[JustNiz]

yeah. I've seen plenty of companies that expect (i.e. dont even ask) you to work an extra 15 hours/week UNPAID just because they are missing a deadline which they promise is an exceptional situation but is clearly planned in and happens every other week .I mean we hired you because you're a team player right? Also factor in that many US companies start employees on 10 days/year paid leave and then have the balls to even take 2 or 3 of those back for non-voluntary shutdown over Christmas, and I would argue the US has some of the most oppressed salaried employees in the world.

Re:38.9 hours a week. ? Thats weak

[AmiMoJo]

I tell my boss that Slashdot is how I keep my skills sharp.

I just hope she doesn't ask which skills.

Re:Only 52

[DontBeAMoran]

"The average person in South Korea worked about 2024 hours in 2017, or approximately 38.9 hours a week."

This falls within the standard 35~40 hours per week, doesn't it?

or emergency OT pay say X2 rate or 120K+col min

[Joe_Dragon]

or emergency OT pay say X2 rate or min pay rate 120K+col.

Re:Only 52

[alvinrod]

What average are they talking about though? The mean, median, or mode? If it's the mean, you could have half of the population working about 80 hours and the other half working about 0, yet your mean still comes out to 38.9 hours even though no one person actually works even close to that.

There's plenty of other "gotchas" that might be built in such as taking the total number of hours divided by 52 weeks in a year, without accounting that the average person has several weeks of vacation so that the real hours worked per week is much higher.

Re:Only 52

[king neckbeard]

A few factors to consider, depend on the exact methodology used.:

1. People not in the workforce, such as children and retirees.
2. Part timers.
3. Vacation time.

Just two weeks vacation turns a 40 hour week into a 38.5 workweek.

vote union we really them now more then even EU

[Joe_Dragon]

vote union we really them now more then even EU worker rights are so good

Re:vote union we really them now more then even EU

[thegarbz]

No. What we need more than ever is punctuation!

Re:vote union we really them now more then even EU

[Green Mountain Bot]

It can be two things.

Re:Only 52

[novakyu]

Judging by this blurp,

The average person in Germany worked the least, at 1,356 hours in 2017

I'm guessing the figure includes people who are working part-time (or possibly not even working at all, if it is a "per-capita" number of hours worked).

Re:Only 52

[thesupraman]

Ffs. Simple maths too hard for you?
That's 38.9 hours every single week. Which is a stupid measurement, but none the less.

Workers in South Korean work their arses of. The problem with this new law is it will be ignored as much at the old one.
In large companies 60 hours is generally considered the minimum, with more expected of you want a promotion.

That's average people

[rsilvergun]

there's above average folks who can put the hours in. Normally they'd be rare and in high demand, but thanks to the H1-B program you can bring as many over as you want and keep cycling until you find one. Sure, even they eventually burn out, but thanks to overpopulation there's no shortage of them.

Re:That's average people

[dgatwood]

there's above average folks who can put the hours in.

I don't believe that this is true. I have yet to encounter anyone who could work extremely long hours consistently without their productivity falling through the floor. I've certainly encountered people who work long hours and achieve tolerable levels of productivity, but in every case, if you took someone with comparable amounts of experience and had them work a 35-hour week, that second person would get at least as much done, largely because of making fewer errors that had to be corrected later.

Mind you, there probably is some variation from one person to another as to how long a week they can tolerate (driven mostly by differences in how much sleep they need, the number of outside activities they are involved in, whether they have kids, etc.), but we are talking about the difference between being optimal up to 35 hours and being optimal up to 40 hours, not being optimal up to 60 hours or 80 hours. The only people who are optimal at programming for 80 hours per week are the ones who are really hiring a team of programmers in India or some other low-wage country to do the first 80% of the work, and then spend 20 hours each week integrating that work, all while billing it as 80 hours worth of work.

Re:That's average people

[dcw3]

This is very job dependent. And, from my own experience, a bit age dependent.

Jobs requiring a lot of thought are going to be affected much more so than that of a burger flipper.

In my 20-30s, I could sit and code all day, for weeks. Just feed me pizza and caffeine, and I was good to go. Now, as I'm creeping up on 60, pacing myself has become much more important.

Re:Only 52

[q_e_t]

Indeed, the median of those working full time would be much more useful a figure.

Re:Only 52

[thegarbz]

2024 hours in the year average: 52 weeks in a year, -15 public holidays not falling on a weekend, - 15 mandatory vacation days = 46 weeks.

The average person worked 44 hours in a week. So no, not within the standard.

Obligatory Office Space

[DontBeAMoran]

Bob Slydell: You see, what we're trying to do is get a feeling for how people spend their time at work so if you would, would you walk us through a typical day, for you?

Peter Gibbons: Yeah.

Bob Slydell: Great.

Peter Gibbons: Well, I generally come in at least fifteen minutes late, ah, I use the side door - that way Lumbergh can't see me, heh - after that I sorta space out for an hour.

Bob Porter: Da-uh? Space out?

Peter Gibbons: Yeah, I just stare at my desk, but it looks like I'm working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch too, I'd say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work.