Non-Regular Worker Anti-Discrimination Correction
Correction of Discriminatory Treatment
What is discrimination correction for non-regular workers?
- A difference in employment type is not, by itself, a reasonable cause
- Benefits beyond wages are often the problem
- Writing down the reason for each pay difference exposes the risk
What this system actually changes is not the level of treatment but where the burden of explanation sits. Items that used to be settled with “because they’re fixed-term” or “because they’re dispatched” now land on the Labor Relations Commission hearing table, where the employer must prove with documents why they differ. Because the employer bears the burden of proving that the treatment is not discriminatory, or that there is a reasonable ground for the unfavorable treatment, any item without a prepared explanation is hard to defend.
The filing deadline is six months from the date of the discriminatory treatment; for ongoing discrimination, the clock starts when it ends. The comparator is an open-ended or permanent employee doing the same or similar work at the same business or workplace; for dispatched (agency) workers, the client company’s employees are the benchmark. A correction order can require the employer to end the discriminatory treatment, improve working conditions, and pay monetary compensation, and for clearly intentional or repeated discrimination, it can order up to three times the damages. Note, however, that this procedure is not a way to demand conversion to permanent status; it is a way to contest item-by-item gaps in treatment.
Two boundaries tend to trip up practitioners. The first is how the comparison is made: the Labor Relations Commission does not look at total pay as a lump sum, but judges each pay item separately. Even if a base-pay gap is explained by length of service, meal allowances and holiday bonuses are contested on their own. The second is the line between this system and equal pay for work of equal value under the Equal Employment Opportunity Act: that law is based on gender, while this system is based on employment type, so the comparators and procedures differ. The less an item is tied directly to pay for work, such as meal allowances, holiday bonuses, condolence payments, and dormitory use, the harder it is to deny it to workers on employment type alone.
The most common objections are 'our rules of employment say only regular employees are paid' and 'they agreed to it in the contract.' But the existence of a rule or of consent is not in itself a reasonable cause. What you need is not a document but a real difference in scope of work, responsibility, or skill. The knock-on effect is worse: a correction won by one person effectively applies to everyone in the same position, so a single item like the holiday bonus can turn into retroactive payments for dozens of people. Retaliating against someone for filing is subject to separate sanctions. Requirements and procedures may be amended, so check the current law.
Hwi KimCEO of HRDIST & Talent Development Systems Consultant
Jongmu KimSpecialist in corporate talent development and job competency buildingKorea’s Act on the Protection of Fixed-Term and Part-Time Workers and Act on the Protection of Dispatched Workers prohibit treating these workers less favorably than comparable workers without a reasonable cause, and provide a correction procedure through the Labor Relations Commission.
Here is a case from Company A, a food manufacturer with 210 employees (hypothetical example). On the packaging line, 62 regular employees and 41 fixed-term workers work the same process in two shifts, yet a KRW 800,000 (≈ US$600) holiday bonus and a KRW 300,000 (≈ US$225) summer vacation allowance were paid only to regular employees. When one fixed-term worker said, 'This time I’m going to the Labor Relations Commission,' and word reached HR, a three-week review began.
- The HR director pulled the last 12 months of payroll and laid out all 27 pay items for regular, fixed-term, and dispatched workers on a single sheet. The items where amounts differed narrowed down to 9.
- When the HR director asked the production manager, 'What can’t fixed-term workers do on the packaging line?', the answer was, 'Equipment checks, maybe, but even among permanent employees only the team leader does those.' It became clear that differences in duties couldn’t explain the gap.
- The labor consultant we retained classified four items unrelated to tenure or responsibility—holiday bonus, vacation allowance, meal allowance, and family-event pay—as high risk. The KRW 150,000 (≈ US$110) team-leader allowance reflected a real difference in duties, so they decided to leave it as is.
- In the report to the CEO, the finance director said, “With 41 fixed-term employees, it will cost KRW 45 million (≈ US$33,700) more a year.” But once the maximum threefold damages on a corrective order and the retroactive amounts were calculated together, the conclusion was to pay up front.
- They amended the rules of employment so that holiday bonuses and meal allowances are paid regardless of employment type, and, for each item that still differs, wrote the criterion into the text: tenure or position.
- Six months later, not a single discrimination correction application had been filed, and turnover among fixed-term workers on the packaging line fell from 18% to 9% per quarter, cutting new-hire training costs by about KRW 6 million (≈ US$4,490) per quarter.