Yoon urges parliament to pass revisions to labor standards law

Nov 29, 2023, 09:53 am

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President Yoon Suk-yeol speaks during a Cabinet meeting at the presidential office in Seoul on Nov. 28, 2023./ Source: Yonhap News

AsiaToday reporter Hong Sun-mi

Yoon Suk-yeol urged the National Assembly on Tuesday to pass the revision to the Labor Standards Act to punish businesses that habitually fail to pay wages late, saying, “Late wages threaten the lives of workers and their families.”

Presiding over a Cabinet meeting, Yoon said there have been already more than 220,000 cases of late payment of wages this year, and the amount of damage has exceeded 1.4 trillion won (US$1.1 billion).

“The number of overdue wages that has been repeated more than once reaches 80 percent of the total amount,” the president said. “Our law handles overdue wages as a criminal offense. The principle of the rule of law in labor and management affairs should be applied fairly to both workers and employees,” he said.

“I urge the National Assembly to pass the revision to the Labor Standards Act during the current session without fail to restrict employers that habitually make delayed payments from participating in the government’s various assistance projects and disadvantage them in public bids and financial transactions,” he said.

President Yoon also urged parliament to discuss the revision to the Wage Claim Guarantee Act that eases access by businesses to the state loan system.

Yoon also ordered a thorough investigation into the recent disruptions in the government’s online civil service networks.

He called for a check of the public administrative network systems in preparation against external cyberattacks, saying, “I order the government’s joint task force organized by the National Security Office to thoroughly inspect cyberattacks.”

“Over the past few years, disruptions have continued to occur in the public administrative network systems, such as COVID-19 vaccination reservation system, social security system, and educational administration information system,” he said. “We need to identify the root cause of the problem and correct it properly.”

“We need to carefully find out whether there was chronic mismanagement by splitting contracts and frequently changing management companies, or a cyberattack from outside,” he said.

“Only when we know the fundamental cause can we prevent something. If security against cyberattacks was the issue, we have to reinforce the security wall, and if management and response are the issue, we must immediately improve the system so that it can operate organically,” he said.

#labor standards law #late wages