Maternity Protection
Maternity Protection
What is maternity protection?
- Maternity protection is about more than leave: it protects working conditions
- Some measures apply from the moment of notification
- Design adjustments so no one is actually worse off
Maternity protection starts to work not on the day the company writes a policy, but on the day an employee announces a pregnancy. From that moment, the employer is immediately obligated to stop overtime, restrict night and holiday work, and honor a request to transfer to easier work. The law already applies even without an internal application form, and even if the rules of employment don't mention it at all. So what needs fixing is not the benefits menu but the channel for receiving pregnancy notices and the procedure for handling reassignment in the week that follows.
The rules vary by stage. Pregnant employees may shorten their workday by 2 hours within the first 12 weeks and after week 32 (moved up from week 36 in a recent amendment, and covering the entire pregnancy for high-risk pregnancies), with no reduction in pay. Time for prenatal checkups is guaranteed as paid time: once every 4 weeks up to week 28, once every 2 weeks from weeks 29 to 36, and once a week from week 37. Overtime is banned outright during pregnancy, and night and holiday work is allowed only with both the employee's explicit request and approval from the Ministry of Employment and Labor. For employees less than a year postpartum, the limits are 2 hours a day, 6 hours a week, and 150 hours a year. Maternity leave of 90 days (120 for multiple births) and parental leave are separate tracks under different laws, so even if you manage them in a single table, don't mix up their requirements.
The most common misconception in the field is, "The employee agreed to it, so it's fine." Night and holiday work during pregnancy is illegal without Ministry of Employment and Labor approval, even if the employee wants it, and a consent form collected in advance is no defense. Treating the shortened 2 hours as unpaid, deducting them from annual leave, or counting a prenatal checkup as half a day of leave are also common mistakes. Refusing a reduction in working hours during pregnancy exposes the company to administrative fines, and if you move someone off hazardous work but also cut the employee's job grade or shift allowance, the protective measure can backfire as a complaint of unfavorable treatment. The detailed requirements change often, so check the latest statutes and Ministry of Employment and Labor guidance.
Jongmu KimSpecialist in corporate talent development and job competency building
Inwoo LeeExpert in leadership, communication, and performance managementThe Labor Standards Act sets out maternity protection rules, including a ban on assigning pregnant employees to hazardous or dangerous work, limits on overtime, restrictions on night and holiday work, reduced working hours during pregnancy, and guaranteed time for prenatal checkups (Articles 65, 70, 74, and others).
Company A, a cosmetics OEM manufacturer, has 210 employees, 130 of them women, and its filling and packaging lines run two shifts, day and night. Over the past two years, 5 of the 9 production employees who announced a pregnancy left before starting maternity leave, and the reason most often recorded in exit interviews was "it's hard to keep working the night shift." (Hypothetical example)
- When the HR director reopened the exit interview records for the 5 employees who left, they showed it took an average of 24 days after a pregnancy notice to move to day shift, and 2 of them noted that they simply endured two months because "it felt awkward to bring it up."
- The company gathered the head of production and 4 line leaders and set a single rule: when a pregnancy is reported, the employee moves to the day shift starting with that week's schedule. The decision belongs to HR, not the line leader.
- They boiled it down to three points on a single A4 page: a 2-hour shorter workday in the first 12 weeks and after week 32 of pregnancy, paid time for prenatal checkups, and no pay cuts. The page went on the locker-room bulletin board and on the back of every monthly payslip.
- They filled night-shift vacancies by hiring 2 replacements and, on a labor attorney's advice, added a clause to the rules of employment that shift allowance lost through a transfer is covered for 6 months, which headed off claims of unfair treatment.
- Eleven months after rollout, the time from a pregnancy notice to a switch to day shift dropped from an average of 24 days to 3, and of the 7 employees who announced a pregnancy that year, all 7 took maternity leave and 6 returned.