"What you mean only 69 hours? You bunch of lazy lima beans!"
Posted on 03/20/2023 2:44:34 PM PDT by anthropocene_x
South Korea’s government has been forced to rethink a planned rise in working hours after a backlash from younger people who said the move would destroy their work-life balance and put their health at risk.
The government had intended to raise the maximum weekly working time to 69 hours after business groups complained.But protests from the country’s millennials and generation z prompted the president, Yoon Suk-yeol, to order government agencies to reconsider the measure.
The plan has also been criticised as out of step with other major economies, including Britain, where dozens of companies last year trialled a four-day week that campaigners said resulted in similar or better productivity and increased staff wellbeing.
South Koreans worked an average of 1,915 hours in 2021 – that’s 199 hours more than the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development average, according to the most recent OECD employment outlook, and 566 hours more than workers in Germany.
Opposition politicians have argued that forcing employees in Asia’s fourth-biggest economy to work longer hours will do nothing to address the country’s record low birthrate.
“It will make it legal to work from 9am to midnight for five days in a row. There is no regard for workers’ health or rest,” the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions said in a statement.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
And a CA Dem congressman proposed at 32 hour work week in the US.
A 69 Hour Work Week?
You have got to be kidding me!
There are people who would be fine with that, some such people even here in the states, but that’s asking an awful lot from people. Some would prefer spending the day as a well paid
Cog in the national machine. I raise a toast to such hard working folks. Ask Japan how Workaholic lifestyles can ruin a family or a marriage. Their new generation also wants more personal time.
Given their youths’ attitude, good luck to the ROK in recruiting future soldiers to defend itself from the Norks and Chicoms.
Also, good luck in hiring enough young factory workers to make artillery shells, to compensate for the quantities that USA and NATO cannot produce to keep up with Russia and China.
What isn’t quite clear in this excerpt is that this proposal was to allow a maximum of 69 hours per week of work, not to mandate a 69 hour work week.
I would tell them to stick a 69 hour work week right up their ### too.
Thank you for pointing out that difference.
Even then, the concern might be that once a 69 hour week is permitted, many companies will immediately begin insisting on it, knowing they would still be within the law.
It would de facto become a 69 hour work week mandate because of Korean corporate culture where failing to work the maximum hours inevitably leads to being terminated.
I worked 70-80 hour weeks regularly from my late teens to my early 40s
I’ll pull them occasionally now but not more than a few times a year and I’ll make up for it the following weeks
“South Koreans worked an average of 1,915 hours in 2021 – that’s 199 hours more than the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development average...”
And us dumb Americans are stuck working 40hours/week or 2,080 hours a year.
That’s impressive. You must have always had a ‘can do’ attitude for work, vs a ‘do I have to do?’.
My Dad was that way. Me, not as much, I will admit.
I have to believe that there would be a corresponding increase in industrial accidents (tied to fatigue) that would compel the South Korean version of OSHA to intervene and stop this move.
Please check my math, but isn't that 75 hours?
You have a falling birth rate, so you want your young people, who are the ones who should be reproducing, working a number of hours a week that will make it unlikely that they will reproduce.
How do you think this will help?
"What you mean only 69 hours? You bunch of lazy lima beans!"
lunch breaks?
President Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho Marx):"Fine, we'll give them shorter hours. We'll start by making their lunch hour, twenty minutes."
Thanks, it was more of a “I don’t want to be poor anymore” attitude and didn’t have much more than “me”, a supportive wife, and a desire to do better in life
That figure doesn’t take into account vacations. Average number of hours per year for Americans is about 1800 per year.
I’m okay with a few crunch time weeks working 70 hours per week for a few weeks straight. But by “few” we’re talking it happening once every few years (i.e. in 2020 when a lot of us code jockies were changing a lot of programs to honor various new business protocols like foregoing late payment penalties, but only on certain conditions, etc.). And I’m always compensated with extra free time later.
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