A dessert bakery operator that divided its business into several separate workplaces to claim it employed fewer than five people has been found to have unfairly dismissed an employee, a regional labor relations commission ruled.
The commission recently held a hearing and recognized the dismissal of a union member identified as A as unfair, ordering the employer to reinstate the worker and pay the equivalent of lost wages, according to the under-five branch of the Online Union affiliated with Gabjil 119, a workplace rights advocacy group, on the 18th.
The company argued that it ran separate workplaces staffed by three, five and two employees respectively, with accounting and human resources managed independently. But the commission found the workplaces lacked independence and autonomy, and that their business purposes, operating methods and personnel and labor management were closely interconnected. It therefore treated them as a single workplace with five or more employees.
According to the Online Union, A worked as a manager at the bakery and had to work nearly 11 hours alone without proper break time as other employees were dismissed or resigned one after another. The union said A was then also dismissed after reporting the owner to the labor office over workplace harassment and unpaid wages.
In dismissing A, the company claimed the worker had caused damage to the business by filing a criminal complaint against the owner over workplace harassment and had changed work schedules without reporting them. The commission found those claims insufficiently substantiated. It concluded that the case amounted to one in which "the employer unilaterally terminated the employment relationship by deviating from and abusing its discretion, even though no grounds attributable to the worker existed."
The under-five branch of the Online Union said it plans to file a criminal complaint against the owner, arguing the company violated the Labor Standards Act, which bars employers from treating workers unfavorably for reporting workplace harassment.
The union described the case as an example of a business splitting itself up to exploit the exemption for workplaces with fewer than five employees and to restrict workers from exercising their rights. It urged the government to expand application of the Labor Standards Act to such small workplaces. The Online Union is a supra-enterprise union that received its establishment certificate from the labor ministry in October 2024, and the under-five branch operates under it. Gabjil 119 said the Ministry of Employment and Labor "needs to conduct a special labor inspection of this workplace and carry out a thorough investigation and strict punishment to send a warning over similar cases."
Wage workers at businesses with fewer than five employees numbered 3.903 million as of August last year, or 17.4% of all wage workers, according to Statistics Korea.