The government is considering granting an extra day off on May 6, a day after the national holiday Children’s Day, designating it as a temporary holiday in hopes of boosting consumer spending.

The plan will be discussed at Thursday’s Cabinet meeting and is “most likely” to be endorsed, said officials from Cheong Wa Dae and relevant ministries.

If the motion is passed, public workers will have a four-day holiday weekend, running until May 8. Employees from private companies, however, are able to enjoy the extra holiday only if their employers decide to follow suit.
The move came a day after the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the nation’s largest business association, made the proposal. The pro-business organization said the measure would create additional domestic demand amid the sluggish economy.

“The economic effect would be bigger than the government’s 2015 decision to declare Aug. 14 as a holiday,” it said. The date last year was designated as a temporary holiday as the Aug. 15 Liberation Day fell on a weekend.

Hyundai Research Institute had assessed that last year’s temporary holiday would create some 1.31 trillion won ($1.14 billion). The KCCI said the economic benefits will be larger this year because most public schools have already designated May 6 as a day off, with the government urging its workers to take leave.

Since temporary holidays are not obligatory by law, designating them has also been criticized for neglecting workers at small and medium-sized companies and considered a shortcut to briefly prop up approval ratings of the government.

“I am afraid the measure would be only limited to public workers and those working at big companies,” said a 32-year-old worker at small public relations firm in Seoul. “If the government wants to give us a holiday, they should make it mandatory,” the worker said.

According to the survey by the Federation of Korean Trade Unions, more than a third of its member did not benefit from the 2015 temporary holiday because they were either not informed in advance or were not entitled to take extra holidays under the contract.

There are currently nine bills pending at the National Assembly to make extra holidays mandatory. But the legislations are expected to be abandoned, as the outgoing parliament only has one month left of its term.

In 2013, the government implemented the system allowing workers to take an extra day off when a national holiday overlaps with the weekend, but the measure faced resistance from the business groups.

At the time, most business associations countered that if the government granted more holidays to workers, they would be discouraged from being motivated to work and give the company the burden of paying extra salary for those working those days.

“It should be a temporary measure because we have to consider fluctuation between supply and demand. If we make it a permanent and mandatory measure, it would be hard for us to be flexible according to economic climate,” Park Chae-woong, a spokesperson for the KCCI told The Korea Herald.

By Yeo Jun-suk

(jasonyeo@heraldcorp.com)