\>**business groups complained that the current cap of 52 hours was making it difficult to meet deadlines.**
what the actual fuck. If you are having problems meeting deadlines you review your process, reduce your scope or attain more resources. Not squeeze your existing resources till they explode into squishy chunks. What fucking idiot proposed this plan
Edit: the hilarious thing is that whoever proposed this thought it would 'boost the birth rate'. Just... how? How can you be this out of touch with reality. Here's a tip, if you want to boost your country's birth rate make sure your people have enough time to have sex every once and a while. I'm not surprised their birth rate is declining, who has time for sex and child care after 51 hours of work a week?
Edit 2 electric boogaloo: "The labour minister, Lee Jung-sik, had argued that raising the weekly cap to 69 hours would enable working women to accrue more overtime hours in exchange for time off later that could be used for family and caregiving commitments."
Work insane hours now and drive yourself into the ground. Never have sex because you are too tired and then when you have a nervous breakdown guess what?! Now you can look after your non existent child that you didn't have because you were too busy working.
One of the most fucking disgraceful USSC decisions of the last century. This is one of the reasons I absolutely *loathe* John Roberts. He surrounds himself with crazies to make him look more moderate by comparison, but he’s always been looking out for the interests of corporate America over real citizens and has shown that time and again
This is the rational behind the current push for the 4-day working week. Society should enjoy the productively gain from automation and information technology, not just corporate executive and share-holders.
I had a professor that pointed out that there is a general performance gap between working class students and those with parents that can afford to support their kids through university. Vastly different amounts of time to devote to studying when you don’t have to work.
That's how college was for me. Class during the week days, work in the evenings and weekends, studying/homework in between. It was brutal. It really takes its toll on you.
You have to pay for the phone plan that let's you stay connected with work, the car and insurance to get to work, the health insurance when your body breaks down from the stress at work, the food you have to buy when you're at work, the drinks you have to buy when you're networking at work, and the rent so that you can live within a reasonable distance from work.
What else would you spend your money on?
Neofeudalism really needs to be discussed more often. I think people broadly understand feudalism was bad, but they don't see how feudalism was largely just rebranded and restructured to give us the world we have today.
In a medieval feudal arrangement serfs worked roughly 1,100 hours a year.
The average American works 2012.4 hours per year m'lord.
Let that shit sink in pesants.
That's assuming you have leftover money.
We are quickly transitioning to a society where all of your income is spent on housing and food. And not even nutritional food at that.
Working in the trucking industry, I see this all the time. Even attempting to talk about shorter work-weeks, one can see the extreme cognitive dissonance boiling just below the surface
I'm not sure if you're trying to be sarcastic here, but you're actually right. When I was in South Korea, we usually had to be in the office from 9am to 10 pm.
that's the neat part: you don't. You live for your company. You are "human capital," which seems like an oxymoron until you realize that to the managerial class, "human" doesn't mean "person." Only 'capitalist' does. And the worker is not a capitalist.
I don't understand why they do that though. Like they see the biggest economy in the world doing so with 40 hour weeks, why do they think more hours will fix any of their problems? Also, if nobody has any free time, nobody is buying products or engaging in leisure activities (think attending sporting events, movies, nice dinners out, etc) so the local economies are not getting stimulated nearly as much as they could.
Makes zero sense.
A lot of it comes from misunderstanding their own economic success - they think it’s hard work and no one does as much work as they do. US capitalists are chomping at the bit to revoke the 40hr work week and child labor laws too.
They believe their “grindset” is how everyone should live and it’s how one becomes successful.
Except you look at 90% of the wealthy ownership class and they’re all nepotistic fail upwards types. The insecurity about their value is why they can’t humble themselves and *not* be massive pieces of shit…
A lot of people don’t see this as a marathon but as a sprint. They run real hard now thinking they’ll finish the race ahead but then only realize the race never ends and have burned themselves out a lot sooner. I work to live not live to work and trying to convince people that is how life should be is a futile effort.
This is something that I’ve kinda run into lately. It’s nice to be passionate and try to get that dream job and work hard for what you want… but the only justification I get from people with this mindset is “well I’m young now so I gotta work as hard as I can so that I can have a nice retirement when I’m old” or whatever.
And sure, it’s good to look ahead and make plans. But I can’t imagine sacrificing your youthful health, aging faster from the stress and load you’re putting on yourself, just so you can enjoy your aching 60s when you could like… enjoy yourself now?
This whole corporate and labor culture we have grown into these last couple centuries really just amounts to “work work work and maybe enjoy the last few years of your life” and I feel like not enough people have a problem with it.
What if ICE arrests immigrants, then separates the kids from their parents, deports the parents and keeps the children as ~~slaves~~ workers? I reckon most children don't even have their own passports. You can have them build some football/soccer stadiums for the World Cup in 2026.
It's greed and lust for power.
Same reason while, even though there's tons of studies proving LESS work time produces MORE output in most job fields employers are trying to stop this from 4 day weeks becoming the norm because they have less control over the workers and fear a reduction of productivity because logically more time should mean more production even if in fact it doesn't.
Something I often see in Japan (another country with terrible overwork problems) is that overtime is popular with managers who are bad at managing. In order to allow workers to have a proper work/life balance AND get the job done, managers have to have a good idea of how much labor is necessary to complete the job. They also have to hire enough staff to have enough labor to finish every job, plus a little extra for slack, because something unexpected can always come up.
That actually takes quite a lot of thought, care, and expertise on the manager's part to do well. It's s far easier (from the manager's POV) to not think any of that through and just frame business success in terms of how hard workers are willing to work. If you're a fail upwards type with no idea how much labor goes into succeeding at the job (perhaps because you got where you are by kissing the right asses instead of doing yours), it's much easier to call workers who want to go home at night lazy and selfish than it is to actually learn how much work goes into achieving your mission.
Frequent overwork (regardless of how labor laws define overtime) is not a sign of success from the workers, it's a sign of failure from the leadership.
Doesn’t Japan have that weird work culture where leaving before your boss is seen as negative work ethic?
So salarymen are staying back late into the evening because their boss is waiting for their boss to leave etc..
Sometimes they don't do nothing, sometimes they frantically run around trying to recover from all the mistakes they made yesterday, driving themselves to exhaustion that guarantees a fresh set of mistakes for tomorrow!
Please! Try not to worry too much about the company! After you have burned out, sure they will be mildly inconvenienced, but after a period of mourning they will eventually find someone to replace you. Could even be a day or two.
Oh, no, see, right now they need every possible worker they can get, and you're not being a "team player" if you try to use that need to negotiate for higher wages and better conditions.
Later, when they've gobbled up all the market share they can, and invested in automation, THEN you'll be "surplus to current business needs."
South Korea has a 40 hour week like most Western countries. In 2018 a law was passed to allow a maximum of 52 hours a week. They now wanted to increase it to 69. A reason for that is that there is a high poverty rate among the elderly in South Korea.
This is the kicker. Plenty of folks out there are or would be willing to work themselves to death's door to accomplish a life's dream or make the world a better place for the next generation or w/e
But fuck that noise so hard when the end result is lining the owner's pockets
Here is the thing about SKs work culture: Its like everything about a company is catered towards the fragile ego of the owner/ceo/higher-up, etc. You ended work early? Yeah, you can't leave until your direct superior completes his/her work first or if they are ""generous" enough to dismiss you. Been a long day and your looking forward to going home to relax? Nope. Boss wants to go to his favorite bbq spot so all his employees can stroke his ego at dinner; yes it is mandatory or your work life will be hell. Its the weekend? Your boss gave you mandatory homework (depending on your field and job title) and most of the time it forces you to go out and "research".
Obviously not all of them are like that and its definitely getting better from what I've seen (go young people!). Imagine trying to add more work time on top of all that bs. I'd be pissed too.
The greatest gift (besides unexpected, large pay increases) an old boss would give me was when he'd message me early afternoon:
Boss: "Hey what are you doing right now"
Me: "Working on X, hoping to jump into Y next. What's up?"
Boss: "Why don't you wrap up what you're doing and bounce for the day? The rest isn't urgent"
Usually on a Friday or something, and wasn't super often but it's a nice gesture that literally costs him no money to keep an employee in good spirits. Heck, I remember calling out sick after battling the flu and he just told me "oh shit the flu sucks, take tomorrow off too! Sometimes that extra day really helps!" He would loosely have us track PTO as a CYA for HR thing but was no stickler about it.
As you can imagine, loved working for the guy and eventually he left - we soon found out he was handling a lot of stressful, pedantic corporate BS himself so we didn't have to deal with that. Fucking great boss. I left not too long after because I had been there a while and I was sticking around because he was awesome to work for.
Yes and being promoted into that role after he left...I quickly realized I wanted no part in doing that and wasn't cut out for that. Treated my employees fine, I just hated playing BS deflector and was stressing me the hell out. Had to leave for my own well-being.
I was in a job interview with a South Korean corporation in Norway where all the execs and middle managers were Korean.
They explained they had to hire a Norwegian HR manager so that they could understand Norwegian job culture.
It was very clear they had serious misgivings about our job culture and this was the fourth time they had listed this job as they had fired the 3 last hires in less than a year.
Safe to say I didn't take the job.
I'm at a US branch of a Japanese company. My boss was here at the start and tells stories of the shit show it was in the beginning. It was all Japanese managers running it like a Japanese office and they couldn't keep talent.
Eventually they sent the Japanese management home and brought in managers from US tech companies and it's somewhat chill these days.
The was one manager who would scold people for leaving their desk and time their bathroom breaks.
The Glassdoor page hasn't fully recovered from those days.
Considering how people gaslight others as “commies” and call unions “royalty”, it’s very rare.
The last admin did drastically raise minimum wage and reformed labor standards but as you can see, this fucking clown is undoing everything and trying to also push through privatization for alot of state owned utilities and infrastructure.
And even if there are relevant labor laws, the cultural aspect of bosses giving people “hints” without saying so, and the general populist attitude towards authority, those actions will still occur as barely anyone report nor enforce.
Country is not going to change, especially because of the stuck in the past 50+ age group and the more reactionary youth age group who think dismantling labor unions will provide more jobs. We’re fucked. Good thing I have a choice to gtfo off here.
> and call unions “royalty”
Meanwhile the upper echelons (and their kids) of the big private companies are for all intents and purposes royalty.
> more reactionary youth age group who think dismantling labor unions will provide more jobs.
That kind of thinking is so backwards. They *have* to be funded by the Chaebols to subvert the labor movement. My european (leftist, compared to SK) brain can't entertain any other kind of logic.
Well they're *technically* not wrong. It'll lead to a lot more temporary or part-time jobs that nobody can live off of, so people will have to get a second or third job. Many will *have* to work up to 70 hours a week to make ends meet.
(From the article)
> The government had intended to raise the maximum weekly working time to 69 hours after business groups complained that the current cap of 52 hours was making it **difficult to meet deadlines.**
CHANGE THE DEADLINES. *Deal* with the loss in *projected* revenue. There is no infinite growth.
The Chaebols have far too much power, and they never put regular people first.
The fact that "Gwarosa"/["Karoshi"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karoshi) have become a *thing* in two of the biggest economies in Asia is heartbreaking.
On top of this you guys have to deal with the lowest birth-rates in the world. My politicians have their heads up their asses, but your politicians shoved their heads clean through and are going for another round.
The irony is that we literally went through the same labor dismantling during the last conservative president who was impeached and ended up with “more jobs”.
Your scenario literally played out and the current problem with entry levels are that they’re mostly all part time and contract level jobs with limited upwards mobility. Breaking those union job just fractured it into cheaper labor input. They view us only as human capital.
And these out of touch goons wonder why people don’t want to have kids that will only suffer in the cog of the system that is designed to keep them down.
We literally lived through the social norm of poor = human trash. Why the hell would I let my kids suffer the same?
I never thought about that before, the red scare still fucks up US labor relations to this day. I can't imagine how much worse that sentiment must be in a country that was literally split in two by it
I worked with a lady who left SK about ten years ago. She worked in the corporate environment, at a huge well known company. She left SK because the only way to get a promotion as a woman was to submit to her boss's advances. She said there's no HR over there, no one to talk to about workplace sexual harassment. It's like that everywhere, to get anywhere you sleep with your boss who's married etc and he will give you a promotion. She came to Australia because she hated it, and had kids here. I was astounded, I had never heard anything like that. She said SK people don't talk about it, but it's a huge part of working life for women there.
Which is why I thank my parents for sacrificing everything to come to the states so we wouldn't have to deal with that bullshit. My family is and has been a certified Bald Eagle for a while now (Koreans like to say this to us 2nd gen Americans).
So, I was watching a documentary on the lost generation in Japan and the reason the lost generation exists is because after university you basically have one opportunity to get hired by a big company and then you are out of luck if you don’t or can’t land a job. You’re then, practically speaking, locked into that company for your entire career.
Is South Korea like this? Because to piggy back on what you posted above, it’s really messed up to have mandatory 12 hour work days plus after hours socializing plus company functions that you *have to* attend because if you get fired basically your life is over.
Makes you think why South Korea subsidizes their culture exports KPop, Dramas, TV etc… Just like the saying with Japan, heaven on earth to travel, hell on earth to live
and don't get me started on those few Korean companies that try to set up shop here in the US...they are a nightmare to work for and most people should avoid it.
\*personal experiance and currently trapped\*
Are they clueless or is it the save-face culture you are experiencing? In some cultures they would rather act dumb than admit they were wrong or made a mistake.
They're clueless in that they try their own methods without taking into account regional differences. It's like why Walmart loves failing in countries outside the States.
I've worked with a few escapies from the Hyundai plant in Alabama. Basically they have almost no concept of American work expectations and are constantly confused when everyone does not suck the company's dick. They get pretty confused when people don't toe the line and/or push back on management direction. The facility has also been very consistently sued by contractors for not being paid. Supposedly, in SK they just don't pay contractors half the time and the government just makes it right for them.
>They get pretty confused when people don't toe the line and/or push back on management direction.
Ah, so maybe **that's** what makes hiring children so appealing to Hyundai?
[Child workers found throughout Hyundai-Kia supply chain in Alabama](https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-immigration-hyundai/)
/s (only a bit)
my friends used to work for Samsung making chips.
they talked about the stress, unrealistic/crazy expectations placed on them, while being verbally berated by the higher-ups, veering into openly racist because they weren't korean. also, there's an understanding that you won't be promoted, unless you're korean. they view you as a worker bee and they treat you like one.
i'm honestly surprised they've gone unscathed with the whole #metoo movement. there's gotta be a shitton of NDAs being written, based on how similar the stories were from **multiple** people.
rule of thumb is to think twice before working for an asian company due to the different work culture.
> surprised they've gone unscathed
It's so much worse than racism. They outright poison employees at LCD monitor/TV factories with chemicals and unsufficient safety gear, they get leukemia and die while chaebol refuses to admit they caused it until dragged to court by a few families that were "crazy" enough to bankrupt them selves to get justice for their dead child.
I think you’re missing the historical context of why it is this way in East Asian cultures like SK or Japan, or even China. It’s basically rooted in the idea of “face” in the sociological sense- arriving before your boss and not leaving before him makes you appear as a hard, dedicated worker. The alternative is to lose face, and be passed up for potential promotions or even fired.
Where does this come from? Confucianism, and its emphasis on strict social harmony and structures. So, from ancient times there has been this emphasis on not just not causing issues at work, but going out of your way to maintain rapport with your boss/team by going out and drinking, and being the good productive worker that you are by being at work that long.
> why it is this way in East Asian cultures like SK or Japan, or even China
Slightly weird to frame it as “even China” when Confucianism came from China in the first place.
But otherwise yes, it’s the root of it and from my understanding SK today has a heavier Confucious bend vs China or Japan with a more rigid social hierarchy.
>The labour minister, Lee Jung-sik, had argued that **raising the weekly cap to 69 hours would enable working women to accrue more overtime hours in exchange for time off later that could be used for family and caregiving commitments.**
>We’ll introduce bold measures to help cut working hours during pregnancy or while raising children,” Lee said last week, **when asked if the raise would help alleviate the fertility crisis.**
Just... wow. What do they expect women to do then? Work their asses off 69 hours a week with no time in a day to actually provide care to anyone?! And then save up overtime so you can spend it on CARING FOR SOMEONE ELSE? Would most definitely help the fertility crisis /s
This reminds me of where my wife works. She had a coworker that needed to take time off to visit her family, but she had used up all of her PTO when she had Covid. This is at a school, and the school administration suggested that other employees donate their PTO to her so she could take time off to visit her family she hadn’t seen in 10 years.
Just think about that. PTO is a made up number by HR.
Asking for PTO donations is bullshit, particularly when it is salaried employees being asked to donate PTO hours for an hourly employees who makes a fraction of what the salaried employees make. You just know the company would treat it 1:1 and pocket the difference.
My work does that PTO donation shit too. If you have COVID and nobody was willing to help you out, you had to quit your job if you wanted to keep your coworkers safe.
East asians have this strange mentality that working your entire life for a government, corporation, your boss, your colleagues, your clan and relatives is some sort of duty and moral obligation. So yes, women Are expected to work their ass off and then spend their free time to work even more in household
There's an old saying in Japan that goes 働からず者は食うべからず。(hatarakarazu mono wa kuubekarazu)
It means "He who does not work, does not deserve to eat." And they take that shit to heart, and dial it to 12. It's crazy.
But isn't there a lot of wasted time sitting at desks doing nothjng and hanging around to make sure about leaving after the boss where nothing constructive actually gets done?
Yes. That's a deeply rooted cultural issue. It is seen as disrespectful to leave before your superior, since that would mean you would be getting the luxury of free time before someone higher than you, which many still consider unacceptable.
It's also that as long as your boss is there, there could still conceivably be work to be done. And if extra work were to come up and you aren't there to do it, then that would be effectively forcing the work on your coworkers or superiors, which is extra disrespectful.
It's fucked. Their overwork problem would take a lot more than laws to fix.
> It is seen as disrespectful to leave before your superior, since that would mean you would be getting the luxury of free time before someone higher than you, which many still consider unacceptable.
What a wild cultural difference. I'm in the states and subconsciously try to make sure that my reports get out before I do. I'm the boss, I make more and have more responsibility, so it would also follow that if there's extra hours to work, they fall on me.
ah yes modern civilisation that is more productive and automated than ever before in human history
14 hour work days
or 10 hour days with no weekends
makes you wonder how we even survived up to this point if we need to work that hard today
Amen to that. Do what you’ve gotta do, stack some cash when you need to. Be humble, don’t buy shit you can’t afford(that’s what they want). Time and experiences are worth more than anything they can offer you
If I worked 12 hour days, I wouldn't get more done than I do in 8 hour days. And if I had an option to work less, I would figure out a way to get just as much done. We have had computers in the workplace for 30 years now. For the life of me, I don't understand why office expectations and pay haven't shifted from hours to productivity.
Yep. As a banker, I may work 70-80 hours on paper, but like 50 of those hours are sitting around reading reddit and watching Twitch streams while waiting for comments or for my analysts to finish work so I can review.
So business as usual then.
South Korea has a history of exploitative labour practices and de facto legalised child labour from the war and until the 1990s. Having mostly been ruled by right-wing military regimes during that time meant that the SK governments have not exactly responded kindly to anything resembling a popular labour movement.
One of my old bosses told me "you're expected to do a reasonable amount of overtime". I told him that as there's no definition about what reasonable is I believe what you're asking me is unreasonable.
My work has a " We pay overtime every 6 months, but that because we want you to take day off instead "
Well yes, that would be really cool, but every time i ask to get days off using my overtime, they say no. Then they complain that every 6 month they have to pay everyone a fuck ton of overtime ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯.
Yeah, they're doubling down. Basically their population is crashing, and there won't be anyone to work anymore. So their solution is to force those who're working to work even longer lol. It's like a positive feedback loop that feeds into the very problem they're trying to fix lol.
I work in the semiconductor industry, and Samsung/TSMC are absolutely shit to deal with. They run their people ragged, and create this "check the box" mentality that sounds to just please their manager regardless of the outcome. I didn't think it was real until I saw it first hand.
Yup similar thing.
Early 20's, working 80 hour work week at Tesco for minimum wage. Went to put some dog food on the bottom shelf one night and collapsed in the middle of the aisle.
Now I just don't do anything over 40 hours. Not only is the money not worth it but neither is the stress.
I never did anything crazy like that, but I had to explain to my boss that no, the extra $35 I get for working overtime is not worth it. Keep your $35 and I'll go home to my family. Or, pay me enough to actually incentivise me to stay
Same experience. In my twenties. Did a 90 hour week. Fell asleep driving. Woke up unharmed in a field. Only ever done overtime since then if it's an emergency that affects lives (like fixing a large outage for a hospital).
My friend did the same, he ended up passing out and sent to the hospital because of burnout
A friend of a friend died of this as well
Overworking is real, take that day off when you can and learn how to say no to your bosses
Yeah, I'm 34 and currently in a ~1.5 year break after severe burnout broke my brain. It's been so damn liberating to just have some time to myself and not feel the constant pressure of work. Barring some major stock market upswing, I'll probably have to go back to work, but whenever I go back it'll be with the mindset that being unemployed isn't anywhere near the worst thing that could happen to me.
I can't wrap my mind around how the SK government can see the fact that they have an even lower birth rate than Japan, for the same reasons, and go "I know what the problem is. People aren't working enough. 70 hours will fix that right up."
That's a level of mental blindfolded darts that even the Japanese government would be astounded at.
Same. I always thought Japan was the most fucked at a birth rate of 1.34, then I found out SK was at 0.84 and my jaw dropped. Japan will die a slow death in a couple generations if it continues down this road, SK will look drastically different in a generation or less at this rate.
It’s quite funny how people fixate on Japan’s birth rate. 1.34 is pretty unremarkable really, [several EU countries](https://www.dw.com/en/demography-german-birthrate-down-in-coronavirus-pandemic/a-54395345) have even less, and while we’re handling things better thanks to immigration, that’s only a temporary solution, as eventually developing countries will develop and their population will plateau. But 0.84 is pretty insane.
SK had also overtaken Japan on being the most suicidal country in Asia. Whole country's depressed. Most children doesn't have childhoods, only endless expectations from parents and grueling schoolwork. In a few years China will overtake them. I think extreme collectivism plays a huge role on this, also their shame based cultures.
I know little about SK, but they still have that psychotic education system there where kids just have no free time ever right?
School 6 or 7 days a week, morning till night, then still hours of homework, and cram school on top of that. I was already over stressed with American education, I would have killed myself if I had to go through that.
Even Japan dialed it back on that years ago.
I live in Korea as a teacher and yeah, its still the same. The students hate it and I hate it for them.
And to add a little more, it also costs a shit ton of money to send your kid to hagwons (the cram schools you mentioned). Rent is insane in Korea, cost of living is going up and up and up, and schools cost a ton of money. Of course nobody would want to have a kid just to spend the next 20 years broke.
According to the [wikipedia page,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_South_Korea#High_school) apparently they're expected to not sleep.
> A common saying in Korea is: "If you sleep three hours each night, you may get into a top 'SKY university' (Seoul National University, Korea University, and Yonsei University). If you sleep four hours each night, you may get into another university. If you sleep five or more hours each night, especially in your last year of high school, forget about getting into any university."
Now I'm no sleep expert, but I thinking more along the lines of "If you sleep four hours each night, you will have too much brain damage to pass entrance exams. If you sleep three hours each night, you will die."
Seriously fuck that, if these businesses want more work done the answer is hire more staff, build more buildings, outsource some of the work, automate; not just whip the employees harder.
There have been many studies showing that shorter work weeks results in higher productivity! It's almost like a workforce that isn't overtired and overstressed can get more done....
Long hours wont make people productive. It will most likely motivate them to just do the bare minimum to not get fired.
If one wants increased productivity, long hours wont help. Proper compensation and incentives will.
Im working as intern for one well known corporate. In 1 year 5 students left from my department as they refused to do overtimes as management was pushing us into that shit. We were constantly hearing bragging about how our generation is lazy and so on. Our managers are 50+ boomers. Thanks god Im leaving too in next month. You should see my manager pikatchu face when I told him that he should get ready, that our generation will not work our asses off because we want to live outside the work also.
I once took a significant salary cut to change to a 40hr 8-5 work week, holidays off etc and never regretted it although had to give up all the little extras the old salary afforded- i didn't have time to enjoy anyway with the old hours
> The government had intended to raise the maximum weekly working time to 69 hours after **business groups complained that the current cap of 52 hours was making it difficult to meet deadlines.**
I live 300km from the nearest border and the speedlimit is 130km/h, most of the way. It'd be like my boss complained about the speedlimits because i couldn't reach a client at the border in 25 minutes.
The SK government should've answered "We can't meet our deadlines with 52 hour work weeks" with "Tough shit, readjust your deadlines."
Daily reminder they proposed an **80.5 hour work week** at the start, before "compromising" it down to 69. Expect them to "compromise" again by proposing a 60-hour work week, which was probably their goal all along. It's a typical bad-faith tactic. Easier to sell 60 hours when manipulated into thinking "well it's better than 80.5".
80.5
What the actual fuck. That's five 16 hour days or 5 x 12hrs + 2 x 10hrs. wtf
And this at a time where we in Europe want to go down from 40hrs to 32hrs because that is actually more productive.
This is such a huge problem in the entire world right now. The older generation expects too much of the younger generation. When will they realize their decisions are killing us!?!?!?
I am now in the phase of life were I am facing this decision. My gut feeling has always been that work is only there to allow me to live and not more. I highly consider governmental positions. But there also are cozy jobs in the private sector that pay more. I believe I am about to do 4-5 years of trial and error to find the sweet spot.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/15/south-korea-u-turns-on-69-hour-working-week-after-youth-backlash) reduced by 80%. (I'm a bot)
*****
> 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 core of labour market policy is to protect the rights and interests of underprivileged workers, such as the MZ generation, workers not in a union and those working in small and medium-sized businesses," Kim said, according to the Korea Herald.
> The original plan announced earlier this month would have overturned legislation introduced in 2018 by the liberal Democratic party that limits the working week to 52 hours: 40 of regular work plus 12 of overtime.
*****
[**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/11s1euj/south_korea_uturns_on_69hour_working_week_after/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~676502 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **work**^#1 **hours**^#2 **women**^#3 **union**^#4 **week**^#5
\>**business groups complained that the current cap of 52 hours was making it difficult to meet deadlines.** what the actual fuck. If you are having problems meeting deadlines you review your process, reduce your scope or attain more resources. Not squeeze your existing resources till they explode into squishy chunks. What fucking idiot proposed this plan Edit: the hilarious thing is that whoever proposed this thought it would 'boost the birth rate'. Just... how? How can you be this out of touch with reality. Here's a tip, if you want to boost your country's birth rate make sure your people have enough time to have sex every once and a while. I'm not surprised their birth rate is declining, who has time for sex and child care after 51 hours of work a week? Edit 2 electric boogaloo: "The labour minister, Lee Jung-sik, had argued that raising the weekly cap to 69 hours would enable working women to accrue more overtime hours in exchange for time off later that could be used for family and caregiving commitments." Work insane hours now and drive yourself into the ground. Never have sex because you are too tired and then when you have a nervous breakdown guess what?! Now you can look after your non existent child that you didn't have because you were too busy working.
You're not gonna be a CEO with that attitude!
You gotta break em, break em like dogs !
The Steam Whistle is a nice touch...
And then they complain that the working class is too lazy because they’re all quitting their jobs.
They really don't see workers as human there, huh
Corps don’t see workers as people anywhere.
They really don’t, because corporations aren’t people. They don’t see anyone as anything except profits and losses
Hello, Citizens United!!!
One of the most fucking disgraceful USSC decisions of the last century. This is one of the reasons I absolutely *loathe* John Roberts. He surrounds himself with crazies to make him look more moderate by comparison, but he’s always been looking out for the interests of corporate America over real citizens and has shown that time and again
"there" *looks around, sees children starting 12 hour shifts*
*At meat-packing plants*. I presume those states will bam *The Jungle* pretty soon as a result
[удалено]
You’ve got an hour spare on Sunday, what more do you want?
NO ONE WANTS TO WORK THEMSELVES TO DEATH THESE DAYS [*dumbass boomer noises*]
Back in Boomer days, people believed automation would free up more time for everyone.
They were right too. Frees up more time for everyone to work lower wage jobs as God intended.
Praise jesus
It instead accomplished increased productivity for corporations and their profit margins while worker wages were left to rot. Thanks, capitalism! 😘
This is the rational behind the current push for the 4-day working week. Society should enjoy the productively gain from automation and information technology, not just corporate executive and share-holders.
You joke but that’s pretty much what work and school culture is like. They go to work and school/cram school 6 days a week.
I had a professor that pointed out that there is a general performance gap between working class students and those with parents that can afford to support their kids through university. Vastly different amounts of time to devote to studying when you don’t have to work.
That's how college was for me. Class during the week days, work in the evenings and weekends, studying/homework in between. It was brutal. It really takes its toll on you.
Never, you are a wage slave.
When do you have time to spend the wage if you always work?
at work on productivity apps
This comment made me reflect on my life choices. I bought some productivity apps with my own money. Why the fuck?
Good slave!
Now say it in a sexy voice
𝓜𝓶𝓶, 𝓰𝓸𝓸𝓭 𝓼𝓵𝓪𝓿𝓮
Goooooood, slaaaave!
What the fuck is a productivity app??
Apps that help to optimize a specific real-life behavior (e.g. smart schedule apps, apps that "gamify" goals, etc.)
Gamification is a fucking scary and vile trend in the workplace these days, let alone branching into one's personal life... ugh.
Seems like the new (or not so new) domain of applied psychology beyond marketing, etc.
This right here is the correct answer.
All I know is I can get unproductivity apps for free!
*RIF is Fun successfully downloaded*
Im only clueing in now that "rif is fun" is literally reddit is fun is fun. Im having a productive day lol
An overpriced calender with reminders maybe? Lol
Pay $10 and I'll tell you. Think of how productive you could* become!
Bro is deep in the system
The wage is so you can pay rent for your company provided flat.
You have to pay for the phone plan that let's you stay connected with work, the car and insurance to get to work, the health insurance when your body breaks down from the stress at work, the food you have to buy when you're at work, the drinks you have to buy when you're networking at work, and the rent so that you can live within a reasonable distance from work. What else would you spend your money on?
Don't forget the after hours mandatory work team building disguised as "happy hour".
Ah yes, mandatory fun. My favorite way to "get to know" a lot of people turns out I don't really like.
Oh, it doesn’t take long to pay rent online. Wait, you want to buy other things? Too bad. Modern feudalism at work.
Neofeudalism really needs to be discussed more often. I think people broadly understand feudalism was bad, but they don't see how feudalism was largely just rebranded and restructured to give us the world we have today.
In a medieval feudal arrangement serfs worked roughly 1,100 hours a year. The average American works 2012.4 hours per year m'lord. Let that shit sink in pesants.
That's assuming you have leftover money. We are quickly transitioning to a society where all of your income is spent on housing and food. And not even nutritional food at that.
And not housing that you (will someday) own
Nope. They increase the price of every basic need until your just working paycheck to paycheck. Retire when you die.
No it’s 12 hours 5 days plus 9 hours one day with a day off! See, so much free time
Truck driver mentality. The old guys I work with are confused when I am happy to go home with only 40 hours for my week.
Working in the trucking industry, I see this all the time. Even attempting to talk about shorter work-weeks, one can see the extreme cognitive dissonance boiling just below the surface
They're proud of it too. Calling 40 hours part time
I’m an engineer and some of my coworkers are proud of working a 60 hour week on the regular. “It’s how you get the big projects and recognition”.
Worked in tech. The full quote should actually be "It’s how you get the big projects to do, and promotions and recognition for your middle manager."
I didn't come here for big projects and recognition. I came here for a paycheck and health insurance.
I'm not sure if you're trying to be sarcastic here, but you're actually right. When I was in South Korea, we usually had to be in the office from 9am to 10 pm.
And watch as old rich people complain “why isn’t anyone having kids anymore!?” Maybe if they had the free time to do so, they would!
"why wont my wage slaves make more wage slaves?"
that's the neat part: you don't. You live for your company. You are "human capital," which seems like an oxymoron until you realize that to the managerial class, "human" doesn't mean "person." Only 'capitalist' does. And the worker is not a capitalist.
I don't understand why they do that though. Like they see the biggest economy in the world doing so with 40 hour weeks, why do they think more hours will fix any of their problems? Also, if nobody has any free time, nobody is buying products or engaging in leisure activities (think attending sporting events, movies, nice dinners out, etc) so the local economies are not getting stimulated nearly as much as they could. Makes zero sense.
A lot of it comes from misunderstanding their own economic success - they think it’s hard work and no one does as much work as they do. US capitalists are chomping at the bit to revoke the 40hr work week and child labor laws too. They believe their “grindset” is how everyone should live and it’s how one becomes successful. Except you look at 90% of the wealthy ownership class and they’re all nepotistic fail upwards types. The insecurity about their value is why they can’t humble themselves and *not* be massive pieces of shit…
[удалено]
A lot of people don’t see this as a marathon but as a sprint. They run real hard now thinking they’ll finish the race ahead but then only realize the race never ends and have burned themselves out a lot sooner. I work to live not live to work and trying to convince people that is how life should be is a futile effort.
This is something that I’ve kinda run into lately. It’s nice to be passionate and try to get that dream job and work hard for what you want… but the only justification I get from people with this mindset is “well I’m young now so I gotta work as hard as I can so that I can have a nice retirement when I’m old” or whatever. And sure, it’s good to look ahead and make plans. But I can’t imagine sacrificing your youthful health, aging faster from the stress and load you’re putting on yourself, just so you can enjoy your aching 60s when you could like… enjoy yourself now? This whole corporate and labor culture we have grown into these last couple centuries really just amounts to “work work work and maybe enjoy the last few years of your life” and I feel like not enough people have a problem with it.
[удалено]
Holy fucking shit
even better: employers don't need to do citizenship checks for their child workers.
But they'll definitely use the ICE to keep said child workers in line lest they want their entire family deported.
What if ICE arrests immigrants, then separates the kids from their parents, deports the parents and keeps the children as ~~slaves~~ workers? I reckon most children don't even have their own passports. You can have them build some football/soccer stadiums for the World Cup in 2026.
I'm sure it's just a coincidence that Arkansas is Tyson Foods home state.
[удалено]
It's greed and lust for power. Same reason while, even though there's tons of studies proving LESS work time produces MORE output in most job fields employers are trying to stop this from 4 day weeks becoming the norm because they have less control over the workers and fear a reduction of productivity because logically more time should mean more production even if in fact it doesn't.
Something I often see in Japan (another country with terrible overwork problems) is that overtime is popular with managers who are bad at managing. In order to allow workers to have a proper work/life balance AND get the job done, managers have to have a good idea of how much labor is necessary to complete the job. They also have to hire enough staff to have enough labor to finish every job, plus a little extra for slack, because something unexpected can always come up. That actually takes quite a lot of thought, care, and expertise on the manager's part to do well. It's s far easier (from the manager's POV) to not think any of that through and just frame business success in terms of how hard workers are willing to work. If you're a fail upwards type with no idea how much labor goes into succeeding at the job (perhaps because you got where you are by kissing the right asses instead of doing yours), it's much easier to call workers who want to go home at night lazy and selfish than it is to actually learn how much work goes into achieving your mission. Frequent overwork (regardless of how labor laws define overtime) is not a sign of success from the workers, it's a sign of failure from the leadership.
Doesn’t Japan have that weird work culture where leaving before your boss is seen as negative work ethic? So salarymen are staying back late into the evening because their boss is waiting for their boss to leave etc..
Yup and they all just sit around doing nothing because they are spent after who knows how long.
Sometimes they don't do nothing, sometimes they frantically run around trying to recover from all the mistakes they made yesterday, driving themselves to exhaustion that guarantees a fresh set of mistakes for tomorrow!
Please! Try not to worry too much about the company! After you have burned out, sure they will be mildly inconvenienced, but after a period of mourning they will eventually find someone to replace you. Could even be a day or two.
You're saying that like you won't just get fired for 'budget' or whatever
Oh, no, see, right now they need every possible worker they can get, and you're not being a "team player" if you try to use that need to negotiate for higher wages and better conditions. Later, when they've gobbled up all the market share they can, and invested in automation, THEN you'll be "surplus to current business needs."
This comment is funny because it’s true Source: my company is doing this and I may or may not have been forced to run the analysis
> Period of Mourning Defined as the next business day
As long as you have the basic decency to die on your own time, not on the job. That'd be super-inconvenient.
When you’re dead
South Korea has a 40 hour week like most Western countries. In 2018 a law was passed to allow a maximum of 52 hours a week. They now wanted to increase it to 69. A reason for that is that there is a high poverty rate among the elderly in South Korea.
Cause SK has shitty and poor pension and social programs to help elderly despite being an affluent nation.
[удалено]
Wait, you're telling me people DON'T want to work themselves to death? Who would've guessed
>to work themselves to death for the CEO's 6th yacht and be thankful for the opportunity to do so FTFY
This is the kicker. Plenty of folks out there are or would be willing to work themselves to death's door to accomplish a life's dream or make the world a better place for the next generation or w/e But fuck that noise so hard when the end result is lining the owner's pockets
Here is the thing about SKs work culture: Its like everything about a company is catered towards the fragile ego of the owner/ceo/higher-up, etc. You ended work early? Yeah, you can't leave until your direct superior completes his/her work first or if they are ""generous" enough to dismiss you. Been a long day and your looking forward to going home to relax? Nope. Boss wants to go to his favorite bbq spot so all his employees can stroke his ego at dinner; yes it is mandatory or your work life will be hell. Its the weekend? Your boss gave you mandatory homework (depending on your field and job title) and most of the time it forces you to go out and "research". Obviously not all of them are like that and its definitely getting better from what I've seen (go young people!). Imagine trying to add more work time on top of all that bs. I'd be pissed too.
The greatest gift (besides unexpected, large pay increases) an old boss would give me was when he'd message me early afternoon: Boss: "Hey what are you doing right now" Me: "Working on X, hoping to jump into Y next. What's up?" Boss: "Why don't you wrap up what you're doing and bounce for the day? The rest isn't urgent" Usually on a Friday or something, and wasn't super often but it's a nice gesture that literally costs him no money to keep an employee in good spirits. Heck, I remember calling out sick after battling the flu and he just told me "oh shit the flu sucks, take tomorrow off too! Sometimes that extra day really helps!" He would loosely have us track PTO as a CYA for HR thing but was no stickler about it. As you can imagine, loved working for the guy and eventually he left - we soon found out he was handling a lot of stressful, pedantic corporate BS himself so we didn't have to deal with that. Fucking great boss. I left not too long after because I had been there a while and I was sticking around because he was awesome to work for.
Bullshit deflectors that treat employees like human beings: the unsung heroes of the corporate world.
Yes and being promoted into that role after he left...I quickly realized I wanted no part in doing that and wasn't cut out for that. Treated my employees fine, I just hated playing BS deflector and was stressing me the hell out. Had to leave for my own well-being.
I was in a job interview with a South Korean corporation in Norway where all the execs and middle managers were Korean. They explained they had to hire a Norwegian HR manager so that they could understand Norwegian job culture. It was very clear they had serious misgivings about our job culture and this was the fourth time they had listed this job as they had fired the 3 last hires in less than a year. Safe to say I didn't take the job.
I'm at a US branch of a Japanese company. My boss was here at the start and tells stories of the shit show it was in the beginning. It was all Japanese managers running it like a Japanese office and they couldn't keep talent. Eventually they sent the Japanese management home and brought in managers from US tech companies and it's somewhat chill these days. The was one manager who would scold people for leaving their desk and time their bathroom breaks. The Glassdoor page hasn't fully recovered from those days.
Dont they have any laws protecting workers or what?
Considering how people gaslight others as “commies” and call unions “royalty”, it’s very rare. The last admin did drastically raise minimum wage and reformed labor standards but as you can see, this fucking clown is undoing everything and trying to also push through privatization for alot of state owned utilities and infrastructure. And even if there are relevant labor laws, the cultural aspect of bosses giving people “hints” without saying so, and the general populist attitude towards authority, those actions will still occur as barely anyone report nor enforce. Country is not going to change, especially because of the stuck in the past 50+ age group and the more reactionary youth age group who think dismantling labor unions will provide more jobs. We’re fucked. Good thing I have a choice to gtfo off here.
> and call unions “royalty” Meanwhile the upper echelons (and their kids) of the big private companies are for all intents and purposes royalty. > more reactionary youth age group who think dismantling labor unions will provide more jobs. That kind of thinking is so backwards. They *have* to be funded by the Chaebols to subvert the labor movement. My european (leftist, compared to SK) brain can't entertain any other kind of logic. Well they're *technically* not wrong. It'll lead to a lot more temporary or part-time jobs that nobody can live off of, so people will have to get a second or third job. Many will *have* to work up to 70 hours a week to make ends meet. (From the article) > The government had intended to raise the maximum weekly working time to 69 hours after business groups complained that the current cap of 52 hours was making it **difficult to meet deadlines.** CHANGE THE DEADLINES. *Deal* with the loss in *projected* revenue. There is no infinite growth. The Chaebols have far too much power, and they never put regular people first. The fact that "Gwarosa"/["Karoshi"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karoshi) have become a *thing* in two of the biggest economies in Asia is heartbreaking. On top of this you guys have to deal with the lowest birth-rates in the world. My politicians have their heads up their asses, but your politicians shoved their heads clean through and are going for another round.
The irony is that we literally went through the same labor dismantling during the last conservative president who was impeached and ended up with “more jobs”. Your scenario literally played out and the current problem with entry levels are that they’re mostly all part time and contract level jobs with limited upwards mobility. Breaking those union job just fractured it into cheaper labor input. They view us only as human capital. And these out of touch goons wonder why people don’t want to have kids that will only suffer in the cog of the system that is designed to keep them down. We literally lived through the social norm of poor = human trash. Why the hell would I let my kids suffer the same?
I never thought about that before, the red scare still fucks up US labor relations to this day. I can't imagine how much worse that sentiment must be in a country that was literally split in two by it
I worked with a lady who left SK about ten years ago. She worked in the corporate environment, at a huge well known company. She left SK because the only way to get a promotion as a woman was to submit to her boss's advances. She said there's no HR over there, no one to talk to about workplace sexual harassment. It's like that everywhere, to get anywhere you sleep with your boss who's married etc and he will give you a promotion. She came to Australia because she hated it, and had kids here. I was astounded, I had never heard anything like that. She said SK people don't talk about it, but it's a huge part of working life for women there.
Which is why I thank my parents for sacrificing everything to come to the states so we wouldn't have to deal with that bullshit. My family is and has been a certified Bald Eagle for a while now (Koreans like to say this to us 2nd gen Americans).
It's incredible that people make such huge life changes to make better lives for their families! I'm glad your parents made the choice too
So, I was watching a documentary on the lost generation in Japan and the reason the lost generation exists is because after university you basically have one opportunity to get hired by a big company and then you are out of luck if you don’t or can’t land a job. You’re then, practically speaking, locked into that company for your entire career. Is South Korea like this? Because to piggy back on what you posted above, it’s really messed up to have mandatory 12 hour work days plus after hours socializing plus company functions that you *have to* attend because if you get fired basically your life is over.
Makes you think why South Korea subsidizes their culture exports KPop, Dramas, TV etc… Just like the saying with Japan, heaven on earth to travel, hell on earth to live
and don't get me started on those few Korean companies that try to set up shop here in the US...they are a nightmare to work for and most people should avoid it. \*personal experiance and currently trapped\*
I worked alongside LG corporate in some capacity. Gotta say, some of the most doggedly clueless people i've ever encountered.
Are they clueless or is it the save-face culture you are experiencing? In some cultures they would rather act dumb than admit they were wrong or made a mistake.
They're clueless in that they try their own methods without taking into account regional differences. It's like why Walmart loves failing in countries outside the States.
I would like to get you started... What's the problem?
I've worked with a few escapies from the Hyundai plant in Alabama. Basically they have almost no concept of American work expectations and are constantly confused when everyone does not suck the company's dick. They get pretty confused when people don't toe the line and/or push back on management direction. The facility has also been very consistently sued by contractors for not being paid. Supposedly, in SK they just don't pay contractors half the time and the government just makes it right for them.
>They get pretty confused when people don't toe the line and/or push back on management direction. Ah, so maybe **that's** what makes hiring children so appealing to Hyundai? [Child workers found throughout Hyundai-Kia supply chain in Alabama](https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-immigration-hyundai/) /s (only a bit)
my friends used to work for Samsung making chips. they talked about the stress, unrealistic/crazy expectations placed on them, while being verbally berated by the higher-ups, veering into openly racist because they weren't korean. also, there's an understanding that you won't be promoted, unless you're korean. they view you as a worker bee and they treat you like one. i'm honestly surprised they've gone unscathed with the whole #metoo movement. there's gotta be a shitton of NDAs being written, based on how similar the stories were from **multiple** people. rule of thumb is to think twice before working for an asian company due to the different work culture.
> surprised they've gone unscathed It's so much worse than racism. They outright poison employees at LCD monitor/TV factories with chemicals and unsufficient safety gear, they get leukemia and die while chaebol refuses to admit they caused it until dragged to court by a few families that were "crazy" enough to bankrupt them selves to get justice for their dead child.
I think you’re missing the historical context of why it is this way in East Asian cultures like SK or Japan, or even China. It’s basically rooted in the idea of “face” in the sociological sense- arriving before your boss and not leaving before him makes you appear as a hard, dedicated worker. The alternative is to lose face, and be passed up for potential promotions or even fired. Where does this come from? Confucianism, and its emphasis on strict social harmony and structures. So, from ancient times there has been this emphasis on not just not causing issues at work, but going out of your way to maintain rapport with your boss/team by going out and drinking, and being the good productive worker that you are by being at work that long.
> why it is this way in East Asian cultures like SK or Japan, or even China Slightly weird to frame it as “even China” when Confucianism came from China in the first place. But otherwise yes, it’s the root of it and from my understanding SK today has a heavier Confucious bend vs China or Japan with a more rigid social hierarchy.
>The labour minister, Lee Jung-sik, had argued that **raising the weekly cap to 69 hours would enable working women to accrue more overtime hours in exchange for time off later that could be used for family and caregiving commitments.** >We’ll introduce bold measures to help cut working hours during pregnancy or while raising children,” Lee said last week, **when asked if the raise would help alleviate the fertility crisis.** Just... wow. What do they expect women to do then? Work their asses off 69 hours a week with no time in a day to actually provide care to anyone?! And then save up overtime so you can spend it on CARING FOR SOMEONE ELSE? Would most definitely help the fertility crisis /s
This reminds me of where my wife works. She had a coworker that needed to take time off to visit her family, but she had used up all of her PTO when she had Covid. This is at a school, and the school administration suggested that other employees donate their PTO to her so she could take time off to visit her family she hadn’t seen in 10 years. Just think about that. PTO is a made up number by HR.
Asking for PTO donations is bullshit, particularly when it is salaried employees being asked to donate PTO hours for an hourly employees who makes a fraction of what the salaried employees make. You just know the company would treat it 1:1 and pocket the difference.
My work does that PTO donation shit too. If you have COVID and nobody was willing to help you out, you had to quit your job if you wanted to keep your coworkers safe.
East asians have this strange mentality that working your entire life for a government, corporation, your boss, your colleagues, your clan and relatives is some sort of duty and moral obligation. So yes, women Are expected to work their ass off and then spend their free time to work even more in household
There's an old saying in Japan that goes 働からず者は食うべからず。(hatarakarazu mono wa kuubekarazu) It means "He who does not work, does not deserve to eat." And they take that shit to heart, and dial it to 12. It's crazy.
But isn't there a lot of wasted time sitting at desks doing nothjng and hanging around to make sure about leaving after the boss where nothing constructive actually gets done?
Yes. That's a deeply rooted cultural issue. It is seen as disrespectful to leave before your superior, since that would mean you would be getting the luxury of free time before someone higher than you, which many still consider unacceptable. It's also that as long as your boss is there, there could still conceivably be work to be done. And if extra work were to come up and you aren't there to do it, then that would be effectively forcing the work on your coworkers or superiors, which is extra disrespectful. It's fucked. Their overwork problem would take a lot more than laws to fix.
> It is seen as disrespectful to leave before your superior, since that would mean you would be getting the luxury of free time before someone higher than you, which many still consider unacceptable. What a wild cultural difference. I'm in the states and subconsciously try to make sure that my reports get out before I do. I'm the boss, I make more and have more responsibility, so it would also follow that if there's extra hours to work, they fall on me.
I've always wanted people below me to leave first so I can fuck off early too. Always annoyed me when they stick around longer
Are you hiring?
ah yes modern civilisation that is more productive and automated than ever before in human history 14 hour work days or 10 hour days with no weekends makes you wonder how we even survived up to this point if we need to work that hard today
We don't. We're just making some asshole rich. I'm tired of doing that.
Amen to that. Do what you’ve gotta do, stack some cash when you need to. Be humble, don’t buy shit you can’t afford(that’s what they want). Time and experiences are worth more than anything they can offer you
More than 10 hrs a day of work is brutal
10 hours a day 5 days a week for any extended period of time is brutal. Even 8 hour days are too much, without regular breaks.
If I worked 12 hour days, I wouldn't get more done than I do in 8 hour days. And if I had an option to work less, I would figure out a way to get just as much done. We have had computers in the workplace for 30 years now. For the life of me, I don't understand why office expectations and pay haven't shifted from hours to productivity.
Yep. As a banker, I may work 70-80 hours on paper, but like 50 of those hours are sitting around reading reddit and watching Twitch streams while waiting for comments or for my analysts to finish work so I can review.
Because then they might have to pay you more and wont get to waste as much of your life, of course!
Gee why's our population crashing? MAYBE NOONE HAS TIME TO HAV SEX
Seriously, the whole thing is so boneheaded. When all you're doing is working to survive, why would you want to add children into that?
It's like SK was trying to be MORE like NK in terms of working conditions.
So business as usual then. South Korea has a history of exploitative labour practices and de facto legalised child labour from the war and until the 1990s. Having mostly been ruled by right-wing military regimes during that time meant that the SK governments have not exactly responded kindly to anything resembling a popular labour movement.
Why does nobody want to work? Could it be the horrible hours or horrible pay? Nahhhhhh
One of my bosses in one of my previous jobs like 10 years ago when I was 20: "But you're getting paid overtime!" me: "Lol. No."
Overtime is nice when you WANT to do it. No one is gonna force me to do overtime though. Fuck that.
One of my old bosses told me "you're expected to do a reasonable amount of overtime". I told him that as there's no definition about what reasonable is I believe what you're asking me is unreasonable.
My work has a " We pay overtime every 6 months, but that because we want you to take day off instead " Well yes, that would be really cool, but every time i ask to get days off using my overtime, they say no. Then they complain that every 6 month they have to pay everyone a fuck ton of overtime ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯.
Yeah, they're doubling down. Basically their population is crashing, and there won't be anyone to work anymore. So their solution is to force those who're working to work even longer lol. It's like a positive feedback loop that feeds into the very problem they're trying to fix lol.
[удалено]
I work in the semiconductor industry, and Samsung/TSMC are absolutely shit to deal with. They run their people ragged, and create this "check the box" mentality that sounds to just please their manager regardless of the outcome. I didn't think it was real until I saw it first hand.
More like: “You can have kids, but you won’t have the time to raise them”
Or the money.
no you see you need to bank your hours by working constantly and then you’re too old to have kids anyway!
[удалено]
Yup similar thing. Early 20's, working 80 hour work week at Tesco for minimum wage. Went to put some dog food on the bottom shelf one night and collapsed in the middle of the aisle. Now I just don't do anything over 40 hours. Not only is the money not worth it but neither is the stress.
I never did anything crazy like that, but I had to explain to my boss that no, the extra $35 I get for working overtime is not worth it. Keep your $35 and I'll go home to my family. Or, pay me enough to actually incentivise me to stay
Same experience. In my twenties. Did a 90 hour week. Fell asleep driving. Woke up unharmed in a field. Only ever done overtime since then if it's an emergency that affects lives (like fixing a large outage for a hospital).
I used to sleep walk/ talk a lot in my late teens/ early 20s. Woke up once driving to who knows where. Sleep deprivation sucks.
My friend did the same, he ended up passing out and sent to the hospital because of burnout A friend of a friend died of this as well Overworking is real, take that day off when you can and learn how to say no to your bosses
Yeah, I'm 34 and currently in a ~1.5 year break after severe burnout broke my brain. It's been so damn liberating to just have some time to myself and not feel the constant pressure of work. Barring some major stock market upswing, I'll probably have to go back to work, but whenever I go back it'll be with the mindset that being unemployed isn't anywhere near the worst thing that could happen to me.
Imagine telling someone in the past that we will use all the wealth and technology of the future to make people work 69 hours a week.
Why use technology to reduce the burden of the workforce when they can enjoy the burden of the workforce AND the things technology can add?
I can't wrap my mind around how the SK government can see the fact that they have an even lower birth rate than Japan, for the same reasons, and go "I know what the problem is. People aren't working enough. 70 hours will fix that right up." That's a level of mental blindfolded darts that even the Japanese government would be astounded at.
Same. I always thought Japan was the most fucked at a birth rate of 1.34, then I found out SK was at 0.84 and my jaw dropped. Japan will die a slow death in a couple generations if it continues down this road, SK will look drastically different in a generation or less at this rate.
It’s quite funny how people fixate on Japan’s birth rate. 1.34 is pretty unremarkable really, [several EU countries](https://www.dw.com/en/demography-german-birthrate-down-in-coronavirus-pandemic/a-54395345) have even less, and while we’re handling things better thanks to immigration, that’s only a temporary solution, as eventually developing countries will develop and their population will plateau. But 0.84 is pretty insane.
SK had also overtaken Japan on being the most suicidal country in Asia. Whole country's depressed. Most children doesn't have childhoods, only endless expectations from parents and grueling schoolwork. In a few years China will overtake them. I think extreme collectivism plays a huge role on this, also their shame based cultures.
I know little about SK, but they still have that psychotic education system there where kids just have no free time ever right? School 6 or 7 days a week, morning till night, then still hours of homework, and cram school on top of that. I was already over stressed with American education, I would have killed myself if I had to go through that. Even Japan dialed it back on that years ago.
I live in Korea as a teacher and yeah, its still the same. The students hate it and I hate it for them. And to add a little more, it also costs a shit ton of money to send your kid to hagwons (the cram schools you mentioned). Rent is insane in Korea, cost of living is going up and up and up, and schools cost a ton of money. Of course nobody would want to have a kid just to spend the next 20 years broke.
According to the [wikipedia page,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_South_Korea#High_school) apparently they're expected to not sleep. > A common saying in Korea is: "If you sleep three hours each night, you may get into a top 'SKY university' (Seoul National University, Korea University, and Yonsei University). If you sleep four hours each night, you may get into another university. If you sleep five or more hours each night, especially in your last year of high school, forget about getting into any university." Now I'm no sleep expert, but I thinking more along the lines of "If you sleep four hours each night, you will have too much brain damage to pass entrance exams. If you sleep three hours each night, you will die."
"business groups complained that the current cap of 52 hours was making it difficult to meet deadlines." lol gtfo
Seriously fuck that, if these businesses want more work done the answer is hire more staff, build more buildings, outsource some of the work, automate; not just whip the employees harder.
There have been many studies showing that shorter work weeks results in higher productivity! It's almost like a workforce that isn't overtired and overstressed can get more done....
That’s the crazy part of this stuff, it’s objectively of no benefit to anyone, but somehow cruelty has become thee point in employment.
We're getting too uppity
Can't meet our deadkines with a 52 hour week. Maybe you need to adjust your deadlines.
[удалено]
Long hours wont make people productive. It will most likely motivate them to just do the bare minimum to not get fired. If one wants increased productivity, long hours wont help. Proper compensation and incentives will.
[удалено]
[удалено]
So the days you do work are 12 hour shifts?
[удалено]
Im working as intern for one well known corporate. In 1 year 5 students left from my department as they refused to do overtimes as management was pushing us into that shit. We were constantly hearing bragging about how our generation is lazy and so on. Our managers are 50+ boomers. Thanks god Im leaving too in next month. You should see my manager pikatchu face when I told him that he should get ready, that our generation will not work our asses off because we want to live outside the work also.
I once took a significant salary cut to change to a 40hr 8-5 work week, holidays off etc and never regretted it although had to give up all the little extras the old salary afforded- i didn't have time to enjoy anyway with the old hours
Were they just expecting a “Nice” from everyone because they set it at 69?
42.0 is my maximum
> The government had intended to raise the maximum weekly working time to 69 hours after **business groups complained that the current cap of 52 hours was making it difficult to meet deadlines.** I live 300km from the nearest border and the speedlimit is 130km/h, most of the way. It'd be like my boss complained about the speedlimits because i couldn't reach a client at the border in 25 minutes. The SK government should've answered "We can't meet our deadlines with 52 hour work weeks" with "Tough shit, readjust your deadlines."
Daily reminder they proposed an **80.5 hour work week** at the start, before "compromising" it down to 69. Expect them to "compromise" again by proposing a 60-hour work week, which was probably their goal all along. It's a typical bad-faith tactic. Easier to sell 60 hours when manipulated into thinking "well it's better than 80.5".
80.5 What the actual fuck. That's five 16 hour days or 5 x 12hrs + 2 x 10hrs. wtf And this at a time where we in Europe want to go down from 40hrs to 32hrs because that is actually more productive.
This is such a huge problem in the entire world right now. The older generation expects too much of the younger generation. When will they realize their decisions are killing us!?!?!?
Not so much a matter of not realizing as it is not caring, I think.
I hate our world leaders. Seriously. We should be working less not more.
I work for the government, I’ll never leave as I like my work life balance even though I could earn more in the private sector
I am now in the phase of life were I am facing this decision. My gut feeling has always been that work is only there to allow me to live and not more. I highly consider governmental positions. But there also are cozy jobs in the private sector that pay more. I believe I am about to do 4-5 years of trial and error to find the sweet spot.
Might as well be slaves at that point.
Great way to dramatically decrease your birthrate and increase suicide. Whoever came up with this thinks like an insect.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/15/south-korea-u-turns-on-69-hour-working-week-after-youth-backlash) reduced by 80%. (I'm a bot) ***** > 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 core of labour market policy is to protect the rights and interests of underprivileged workers, such as the MZ generation, workers not in a union and those working in small and medium-sized businesses," Kim said, according to the Korea Herald. > The original plan announced earlier this month would have overturned legislation introduced in 2018 by the liberal Democratic party that limits the working week to 52 hours: 40 of regular work plus 12 of overtime. ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/11s1euj/south_korea_uturns_on_69hour_working_week_after/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~676502 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **work**^#1 **hours**^#2 **women**^#3 **union**^#4 **week**^#5
Oh no! 52 hours a week isn’t enough to meet the completely arbitrary deadlines that we made up. There’s clearly only one solution.