Based on a recent amendment of the Equal Employment Opportunity and Work-Family Balance Act, the number of paternity leave days has increased from five to ten and the maximum period of reduced working hours for childcare has become two years.
The amendment takes effect from October 1st, 2019 for all companies.
The following are major points of the amended articles. Be reminded that this is not a verbatim translation of the articles.
An official translation of the amended law by the Ministry of Employment and Labor is not available as yet.
Paternity leave (Article 18-2 of the Equal Employment Act)
- If an employee requests leave because of the childbirth of one’s spouse, the employer should grant the leave of ten days. The period of the leave should be paid.
- For employees in the small and medium-sized companies classified as preferential supported enterprises, the first five days of the paternity leave are paid by the employment insurance. (For the preferential supported enterprises, check out section 4 of this post.)
- An employee cannot request paternity leave if 90 days have passed since the childbirth one’s spouse.
- An employee can break paternity leave into two periods and use them separately. An employee can break paternity leave only once.
- An employer should not dismiss or treat unfairly an employee because of paternity leave.
Reduced working hours for childcare (Article 19-2 of the Equal Employment Act)
- An employer should grant a reduction of working hours if an employee requests it to take care of one’s child who is aged 8 or less or in the second or lower grade of an elementary school.
- An employer may not grant reduced work hours in cases stated in the presidential decree of the Equal Employment Act. For example, it is impossible to employ a substitute or the normal operation of business is significantly impeded.
- If an employer does not grant reduced working hours for cases mentioned in 2, the employer should inform the employee in writing why the reduction is not granted and make the employee use childcare leave or the employer should have consultation with the employee on the possibility of assistance through other measures such as adjustment of starting and finishing hour for work.
- An employee’s work hours, when reduced work hours are granted, should be fifteen hours per week at the minimum and not exceed thirty-five hours a week.
- The period of reduced work hours is one year. The unused period of childcare leave can be used for the reduction of work hours. Because childcare leave is for one year, an employee who does not use the leave can request a maximum two-year period for a reduction of work hours.
- An employer should not dismiss or treat unfairly an employee because of reduced work hours for childcare.
- After the end of the reduced work hours, the employer should reinstate the employee to the same job as before the reduction or any other job paying the same level of pay as the previous job.