How premium pay is worked out

What premium pay attaches to

Premium pay adds a set percentage on top of the ordinary wage, and Article 56 of the Labor Standards Act names three occasions: overtime, holiday work and night work. They sit in separate paragraphs, which is why two of them can attach to the same hour.

Ordinary wage is defined by Article 6 of the Enforcement Decree: pay promised regularly and uniformly for contracted or total work. If it is set monthly, paragraph 2 subparagraph 4 gives the formula for the hourly figure.

Article 57 lets an employer give leave instead of money, if there is a written agreement with the employee representative. At such a company what actually arrives may be time off rather than cash.

The three premiums

Overtime is work past the statutory hours in Article 50: 40 hours a week and eight hours a day, both excluding breaks. Article 56 (1) adds at least 50 percent to those hours.

Holiday work is split in two by Article 56 (2): 50 percent for the first eight hours and 100 percent beyond. The paragraph opens with notwithstanding paragraph 1, so an overtime premium is not added on top of it.

Night work is defined by Article 56 (3) as work between 22pm and 6am, carrying 50 percent. This one is independent, so hours can be overtime and night, or holiday and night.

Article 54 requires at least 30 minutes of break for a four hour day and at least an hour for an eight hour day, taken during working hours. Break time is not working time and drops out of the calculation.

Article 11, Decree Article 7 and Annex 1 decide what binds a workplace with four or fewer regular employees. The Chapter 4 row of Annex 1 lists Articles 54, 55 (1) and 63 only, so Article 56 does not apply there.

What this calculator does

This section describes the code. Each shift is walked one minute at a time, asking whether that minute is night, whether the day is a holiday and whether the shift has passed eight hours. Consecutive minutes with the same answers become one block in the result table.

The break is removed from the start time you give, for the length you give. If you enter break minutes without a time, the calculation stops and asks for the time. The statute does not fix when the break falls, and without it we cannot tell which minutes were night work.

The eight hours are counted from the start of the shift. A shift that runs past midnight is treated as one continuous stretch. Because the holiday status belongs to a date, a shift that crosses midnight is asked about the next day separately.

On a normal day the minutes past eight carry the overtime premium. On a holiday the first eight and the rest are split. Night minutes add the night premium on top. If the workplace has fewer than five employees, all three premiums are zero and only the ordinary wage remains.

Turning on the weekly option adds up the first eight hours of each non-holiday day and applies the overtime premium above 40 hours. Hours already counted as daily overtime are excluded so nothing is counted twice. Holiday hours are left out of that sum because Article 56 (2) handles them separately.

Base pay and premium pay are reported separately, each rounded down to the won. On a monthly salary the base for contracted hours is already in your salary, so the figure to check against a payslip is usually the premium portion.

What to enter

The ordinary hourly wage is rarely just base salary divided by hours. It includes pay promised regularly and uniformly for contracted work, which can pull in fixed monthly allowances. If your payslip states an ordinary hourly wage, use that figure.

The divisor for monthly pay comes from Enforcement Decree Article 6 (2) 4. With 48 weekly paid hours it is 208.57, rounded to 209. Part time workers have different contracted hours and therefore a different divisor.

A holiday here means a day that is a holiday for you at that workplace, not a red day on the calendar. Article 55 guarantees at least one paid holiday a week plus the public holidays named by decree, and companies add their own. On a rotating roster your own days off are what count.

Reading the overlap

To see an overlap, look at the names on each block in the result table. A block labelled as overtime that also carries the night tag is an hour with both premiums, and the multiplier column shows the result as a percentage.

On a long holiday the multiplier steps up once more at the eight hour mark. The first eight hours and the rest appear as separate rows so you can see where it happened.

Enter several days at once and each day is counted against eight hours on its own, with only the totals added. Enter the days of one week and you can also see the weekly excess.

Why your payslip differs

The usual reason is the ordinary wage. If the company used a different scope than the figure you entered, every line moves with it. If your payslip states an ordinary hourly wage, try again with that.

Under a comprehensive wage agreement a fixed monthly amount already contains a set number of premium hours. The validity of such agreements comes from case law rather than the statute, so it is not modelled here.

If your work rules or collective agreement set a higher rate, that rate applies. This calculation is the statutory floor and nothing stops an employer from paying above it.

For a dispute, ask your payroll office or the Ministry of Employment and Labor helpline on 1350. This calculator does not give legal advice.