Court: "Flexible Work Unit Period Need Not Match the Shift Work Rotation Cycle"

A court ruling has emerged holding that the unit period for applying a flexible working hours system does not necessarily have to match the shift work rotation cycle.

According to the legal community on the 21st, the 1st Civil Division of the Uijeongbu District Court, in the appeal of a wage claim lawsuit filed by care worker Mr. A against nursing home director Mr. B, overturned the original judgment that had ruled in favor of the plaintiff and dismissed the plaintiff's claim.

Mr. A worked for about one year in 2023 at the nursing home operated by Mr. B. The following year he filed a wage arrears complaint with the labor office, which later led to a civil lawsuit.

They applied a two-week-unit flexible working hours system under the Labor Standards Act. Generally, working hours excluding break time cannot exceed 8 hours per day and 40 hours per week. However, applying this system allows one to work more when the workload is heavy and rest when it is light, thereby exceeding 8 hours a day and 40 hours a week. Provided that work in any particular week must not exceed 48 hours.

Mr. A worked in a pattern of a 24-hour shift including 8 hours of break, followed by two consecutive days off. However, Mr. A argued that in this case the shift work rotated on a three-week cycle, so it could not be regarded as a two-week-unit flexible working hours system. Accordingly, he asserted that the flexible working hours system was invalid, and thus Mr. B should pay about 1 million won, including overtime allowances for days he worked more than 8 hours.

In contrast, Mr. B countered that he had lawfully introduced and operated a two-week-unit flexible working hours system, and that since no problem of exceeding the working hours limit had occurred, there were no additional wages owed to Mr. A.

The first instance ruled in Mr. A's favor, finding that the nursing home's work rotated on a three-week cycle and that the average weekly working hours exceeded 40 hours, thereby denying the validity of the two-week-unit flexible working hours contract they had concluded.

However, the second instance judged differently. The appellate bench found there was no basis for setting the unit period of a flexible working hours system to be identical to the work rotation cycle. It also found that in Mr. A's case, since he worked 16 hours over two weeks five times, he worked an average of 40 hours per week, and the working hours in the weeks he worked three times also did not exceed 48 hours, so the working hours limit was not violated.

Attorney Heo Seong-guk of Daeryun Law Firm, who represented Mr. B, explained, "The Labor Standards Act merely sets the requirements for the flexible work system and places no special restrictions on setting the unit period. By arguing that there is no basis for making the unit period identical to the actual on-site work rotation cycle, we were able to overturn the first-instance judgment and win the case."

Reporter Jeong Cheol-uk

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