My company pays holiday allowances to employees for Chuseok and Lunar New Year’s Day. Later, however, foreign workers like me were paid only about half of the holiday allowance paid to the Korean employees. Does Korean labor law allow employers to pay their workers less in holiday allowance because they are foreigners? Is this discriminatory?
Article 6 of the Labor Standards Act stipulates that employers are prohibited from discriminatory treatment in working conditions on grounds of nationality, religion, gender or social status. Whether discrimination in working conditions is based on nationality or not is judged by whether or not the discrimination against working conditions is based solely on nationality. It is also necessary to comprehensively judge whether there is any discrimination that deviates from a reasonable standard considering all elements of the treatment of workers such as wages and working hours. If there is a reasonable cause for the differential payment of such holiday allowances, it would not be a violation of Article 6 of the Labor Standards Act.
It is difficult to give an exact answer because the specific facts are unknown. However, if the duties performed by Korean and foreign employees are the same or similar and there is no difference in responsibilities, difficulty, working hours, qualifications and tenure and if the foreign employee does not receive any other benefits or support than the Korean employee in other areas, it would be a breach of the principle of equal treatment to give a lower holiday allowance to foreign employees than what their Korean counterparts receive simply because of nationality.