I worked on Saturday at the request of my employer. However, when I received my wages, I was paid only an overtime work allowance and not a holiday work allowance. When I asked the employer, he said this is because Saturday is a non-working day off, not a holiday. Is a non-working day different from a holiday? Isn’t a day off that you must work considered holiday work?
The Ministry of Employment and Labor divides the days that are not prescribed work days into “holidays” and “non-holidays” through administrative interpretation and sees the latter as non-working days. Therefore, in a workplace where the prescribed work week is five days from Monday to Friday, if Sunday is a weekly holiday, Saturday will be a non-working day.
An example of a typical non-working day is a Saturday which became an extra off day when a workplace which had six fixed work days and Sunday as a weekly holiday switched to a five-day workweek. In this case, Monday to Friday are fixed work days, Sunday is a weekly holiday, and Saturday is a day off. Another example would be off-duty days excluding weekly holiday in shift work. For example, if you take three days off after four days of work shift, two days, excluding one weekly holiday, will be non-working days. Or, if you work every other day for a 24-hour shift, off-duty days other than one weekly holiday will be non-working days.
Unless there is a separate agreement on non-working days, in principle, they are unpaid days. If you worked on a non-working day but did not exceed the statutory standard working hours of 40 hours a week or 8 hours a day, you would only receive 100% of ordinary wages. That is, no additional allowance will be paid. However, if you exceed 40 hours a week including this time, you will be paid 150% for overtime.