Nexon and Smilegate’s labor unions participate in the discussion on response to the Yun Seok-yeol government’s flexible working hours policy. The two game unions will hold a policy discussion hosted by Rep. Lee Su-jin (proportionate) of the Democratic Party of Korea on the 13th to give their voices to game development workers.
In relation to this, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the ministry in charge of the game industry, said, We will flexibly apply the 52-hour week system to the game industry. The Ministry of SMEs and Startups also said, We will try to make the 52-hour workweek flexible. The Korea Game Industry Association has requested the government to ease the 52-hour workweek.
The game industry’s management and labor unions are at odds with each other over the 52-hour workweek. The game union conducts a survey of workers to confirm the claim that employees want to work more than 52 hours, but they can’t because of the law.
The content of the question is △ Do you know the employee representative system in your company? △Do you think the representative of your company’s workers will be able to firmly refuse when the company imposes a disadvantage on workers? △ What do you think the legal maximum working hours (52 hours per week) should be? △ What do you think about being able to work an average of 52 hours per month and up to 92 hours per week? △ Do you think the comprehensive wage system for IT industry and office research workers should be abolished? etc. The game union plans to announce the survey results at a meeting on the 13th.
Bae Bae-chan, head of Nexon’s labor union, said, There is still a system that allows you to take a break as much as you work hard. But if you change it to be more flexible, will the total amount of work decrease and our rest time really increase? The key to preventing overwork is overtime work. It has to be a burden on the company. If it is no longer a burden, crunch is inevitable. If you really want a life with dinner, let’s abolish the comprehensive wage system first.
Shin Myung-jae, senior vice president of Smilegate’s labor union, said, When dealing with problems in the industry, listen to workers (parties) other than companies. The vast majority of IT workers oppose labor flexibility. I will talk, he said. If we want to increase our competitiveness, let’s go in the direction of improving the quality of labor rather than increasing the quantity of labor as in the past, he added.