Contract workers put in 20 days a month, 8 hours a day — FKTU says minimum wage can apply

Contract workers — including food delivery riders, home appliance installers and visiting home tutors — work hours comparable to those of regular wage employees and should therefore be covered by the minimum wage, the Federation of Korean Trade Unions argued Tuesday.

The Federation of Korean Trade Unions, known as FKTU, presented a proposal titled "Plan for Applying the Minimum Wage to Contract Workers" at the Minimum Wage Commission's fourth plenary session, held Tuesday at the Government Complex Sejong.

Yu Jeong-yeop, head of FKTU's policy division, who delivered the presentation, drew on findings from a government-commissioned survey on working conditions among contract workers. The research was conducted under a Ministry of Employment and Labor contract to inform deliberations on whether minimum wage rules should cover such workers, and the report had previously been distributed only to commission members.

The survey covered approximately 651,000 workers across six occupational categories: delivery and parcel couriers, home-visit installation workers, care and housekeeping service workers, after-school instructors and visiting home tutors.

The findings showed that contract workers averaged 19.3 to 22.2 working days per month and 7.4 to 8.8 hours per day. FKTU said the data demonstrated that working hours for contract workers can be calculated in much the same way as for regular wage employees.

In fact, 81.2 percent of survey respondents said they did not consider their working arrangements significantly different from those of wage workers.

The degree of workplace control was also found to be substantial. Some 93 percent of respondents said companies or platforms in effect unilaterally set their pay, and an average of 74 percent said they received work instructions from customers or platforms.

High proportions also reported being subject to controls over their commuting and waiting time. Among care and housekeeping workers, 84.8 percent said they were subject to time controls imposed by the hiring party, as did 68.2 percent of visiting home tutors.

More than half — 54.4 percent — said they worked exclusively for a single platform or company. Only 14.2 percent said their work could be performed by a substitute. Among visiting home tutors, 81.8 percent said no substitute was available.

Some 71.2 percent of respondents said their work arrangements included sanctions or penalties imposed by companies or platforms.

FKTU said the survey results demonstrated both the practical subordination of contract workers and the feasibility of calculating working hours for the purpose of applying the minimum wage.

"Platform companies already hold vast amounts of data — travel time, waiting time, actual task time," Yu said. "That data can be used to derive a standard working-hours figure."

He added that an hourly wage could then be calculated by dividing net income — total commission minus necessary expenses such as fuel costs — by those standard hours, and that the resulting figure could serve as the benchmark for determining minimum wage compliance.

However, Yu proposed that occupations where working hours are difficult to measure objectively — such as webtoon artists — should be considered for separate protections, such as a minimum earnings regime, rather than the standard minimum wage.

Meanwhile, the Minimum Wage Commission has made the question of extending minimum wage coverage to contract workers — including delivery riders, parcel couriers and visiting home tutors — a central issue in this year's deliberations. Labor groups say the system is needed to protect platform and special-employment workers, while business groups oppose it, citing the difficulty of measuring working hours and the distinct characteristics of each industry.