Reasons for Proposal
The current Act prescribes the obligation to pay interest for delayed wages and retirement benefits according to the settlement of payments, imposes up to three years imprisonment or a fine of up to 30 million won for overdue wages as a crime that is not punished without consent, and requires the disclosure of the list of business owners in arrears.
However, since provisions on interest for delayed payment of wages does not apply to incumbent workers and contain related penalties, they are less effective in achieving the original purpose of ensuring rapid payment of overdue wages, and since overdue wages are defined as a crime that is not punished without consent, there are many cases of avoiding legal punishment by receiving the statement of unwillingness to punish from workers. In the end, because sanctions against overdue wages are weak, overdue wages still occur frequently, and the workers must endure the damage.
In addition, for overdue wage crime, the prescription of a public prosecution under the Criminal Procedure Act is five years, whereas the statute of limitations under the current Act is three years, so system imbalance occurs, and a problem has been raised that internal investigation is closed for any cases of overdue wages that have passed three years in the practice of the Employment and Labor Administration.
Therefore, this amendment aims to reorganize the relevant provisions to eradicate habitual overdue payments by business operators.
Details
A. Extend the application of the obligation to pay interest for delayed wages to even overdue wages for incumbent workers and provide relevant punishment provisions (Article 43 (3) and Article 109).
B. Introduce “punitive damages” for overdue wages and enable the Minister of Employment and Labor to request sanctions, such as business suspension, if any business owner in arrears does not comply with the labor inspector's corrective order (Article 43-4 and Article 43-5 newly inserted).
C. Extend the statute of limitations for wages to five years. To this end, extend the reservation period of related documents to five years and, at the same time, delete the no punishment without consent clause related to overdue wages (Articles 42, 49, and 109).
