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Labor Relations
Weekly Rest Day
10/1/2025
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Author:system
The weekly rest day, as per Article 55 of the Labor Standards Act, is a holiday that employers must provide to workers who have fully attended their prescribed working days in a week, on average at least once a week with pay. Having at least one day of rest per week is an internationally universal system. Therefore, paid weekly rest days apply regardless of employment types such as temporary, contract, or daily workers, excluding workers whose average prescribed weekly working hours are less than 15 hours, and also apply to workplaces with fewer than 5 employees. Since the weekly rest day is paid, there is no obligation to provide labor, but wages must be paid equivalently to regular working days. For salaried workers, unless there is a special agreement, it is considered that the weekly rest day pay is included in the monthly salary amount. For hourly workers, the weekly rest day pay is the amount obtained by multiplying the hourly rate by the number of prescribed daily working hours. Generally, in workplaces, paid weekly rest days are often granted on Sundays, which are public holidays, but the weekly rest day does not have to be Sunday; designating a specific weekday through employment regulations or collective agreements and granting it regularly aligns with the purpose of the weekly rest day system. In principle, the weekly rest day is granted only when the prescribed number of working days in a week are fully attended, so it cannot be granted if there is one or more days of absence. However, tardiness, early leave, or outings do not count as absences, so even frequent tardiness, early leaves, or outings cannot be treated as absences to deny the weekly rest day. Pregnant women and workers under 18 years old cannot be made to work on rest days in principle, but exceptionally, for pregnant female workers upon their explicit request, and for women within one year postpartum or workers under 18 with their consent, the employer may, after sincere consultation with the worker representative, obtain permission from the Minister of Employment and Labor to engage them in rest day work. Meanwhile, as part of legal compliance struggles, there are cases of collectively refusing rest day work following labor union instructions, but case law holds that if rest day work has become customary due to business necessity, refusing it constitutes a dispute act.
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