Samsung Electronics offers 4-day workweek to employees

Samsung Electronics employees exit the company's headquarter building in Seocho District, southern Seoul, in January. [NEWS1]

Samsung Electronics is giving a shot at a flexible work schedule that allows employees to take have a four-day workweek once each month, on the condition that they have satisfied their monthly required working hours.

Eyes are on how the decision from Korea's largest employer, with more than 121,000 employees as of December, will influence other companies that benchmark Samsung Electronics, and potentially reignite the workweek debate in the political arena.

The chipmaker’s quasi-four-day workweek will come on the Friday of the payday week, starting June 23, according to industry sources. Samsung’s paychecks are typically given out on the 21st day of each month.

Employees in the production line working eight-hour shifts in four groups, however, will work on shifts as usual.

All other Samsung Electronics employees, including those under the Device Solutions division in charge of semiconductors and the Device eXperience division overseeing smartphones and consumer electronics, will be entitled to the optional flexibility, given that they have met the minimum 160- to 168-hour demand.

The flexible four-day workweek was agreed upon by labor and management during salary negotiations held in April. The company’s management reportedly proposed the partial four-day week for morale-boosting purposes and workers’ representatives gave the nod.

“It’s our job to bring in good people and form a flexible culture that allows the organization to adapt to changes,” Samsung Electronics Executive Chairman Lee Jae-yong told the company’s executives at a leadership seminar held June last year.

Samsung’s chipmaker rival SK hynix has been running a similar partial four-day system since April last year, allowing its employees to take the third Friday of the month off if they have worked more than 80 hours in the previous two weeks.

A full or flexible workweek system was adopted by major Korean IT companies such as Viva Republica in 2021 and Woowa Brothers in 2022 in an effort to promote a healthy work-life balance and reduce office population density during the pandemic.

A Samsung Electronics spokesperson described the new move as a measure to offer a break to those who have worked their required working hours.

The new work schedule, nevertheless, is distant from the fiercely-debated full four-day workweek.

The Yoon Suk Yeol government faced backlash after announcing plans to increase the flexibility of the 52-hour workweek system in March. Reduced working hours were a presidential campaign pledge of then-presidential candidates Lee Jae-myung and Sim Sang-jung in 2022. The Democratic Party's floor leader Rep. Park Kwang-on said the main opposition party will "take bold strides to a 4.5-day workweek" during a party meeting in May.

Korea’s attempt to lift the heavy burden of labor dates back to July 2004 when a six-day workweek was cut to five days. Almost two decades later, a push for a four-day week is raging in Korea as workers demand labor hours on par with global standards.

Koreans worked 3.2 hours more every week than full-time workers in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member states, who worked around 37 hours per week on average, in 2021, according to OECD data released in March. Koreans worked about five hours more than the workers in the Group of 7 countries.

The call for fewer working hours is stronger from younger generations, whereas the older generation and the self-employed are against the change.

Of those in their 20s and 30s surveyed by Hankook Research in 2021 about the four-day weekday, 73 percent and 70 percent, respectively, said they were in favor of a shorter workweek. In contrast, 65 percent of those above 60 and 61 percent of the self-employed opposed it.

Of the 1,000 people in total surveyed by the research firm, 51 percent said they were in favor of the change, but 64 percent said they will not choose to work fewer hours if their salary shrinks because of the reduced working hours.

Four out of 10 Samsung Electronics employees are under 40 years of age.

BY SOHN DONG-JOO [sohn.dongjoo@joongang.co.kr]