A, who worked as a monitor for the online community, Nate Pann, screened at least a thousand comments an hour. His main task was to check each and every comment and filter out any advertisements and violent content. At one time when the number of online users surged due to the COVID-19 pandemic, he was so busy he couldn’t even enjoy a trip to the bathroom. He had to work six days a week without any holidays and leave. Then one day, A received a notice, “It will be difficult to renew your contract due to restructuring.” He argued that this was an unfair dismissal, but the company replied that it was a legitimate termination of the contract. Although A worked just like any other employee, on paper, his status was a freelancer who worked according to a subcontract.

A door has opened for online monitors working in the IT industry like A to be recognized as an “employee.” The National Labor Relations Commission recently made a decision recognizing their worker status. According to the Kyunghyang Shinmun coverage on August 1, when A and his colleagues recently applied for relief from the unfair dismissal, the National Labor Relations Commission ruled, “According to the Labor Standards Act, they are workers and the termination of a contract without due procedures is an unfair dismissal.” The commission further ordered, “The employer should reinstate A and the others and pay their wages for the period they were laid off.”

A and his colleagues signed a freelance contract in March 2016 with Trans-cosmos Korea, which undertook the monitoring task from SK Communications, the company that runs Nate Pann. They worked 4-5 hours on weeknights and 8 hours a day on weekends. Two to three workers checked and screened online comments simultaneously. Since they were to deal with problematic comments and posts within thirty minutes, on busy days, it was hard to have meals on time.

The company gave them specific work instructions. The company frequently conveyed guidelines on how to handle videos and posts and demanded the monitors to delete certain comments they missed. If a person on duty made a mistake, his name and the details of the problem were posted on an online bulletin for work. However, since officially A was a freelancer, the company did not provide insurance policies and he paid a business tax instead of an earned income tax.

A and his colleagues worked for four years and seven months renewing their contracts with the company on eight occasions every 6-7 months. Then at the end of last August, they received a notice from the company informing them that the company had no intention to renew their contracts. Thus their contracts were terminated as of September 30. They applied for relief from the unfair dismissal at the Seoul District Labor Relations Commission in December that year, but the commission dismissed their application claiming that “They signed the contracts as freelancers and the work orders from the company were the least of measures necessary for the tasks.”

However the National Labor Relations Commission overturned this decision. The commission clearly stated the fact that A and his colleagues were laid off unfairly. When the labor authority makes a ruling on the nature of the workers, they go beyond the formality of the contract and consider the actual working conditions. And they believed that according to the details of their tasks, it was right to see A and his colleagues as workers who were employed by the company despite their contract as freelancers.

The National Labor Relations Commission focused on the fact that the tasks were performed by A and his colleagues according to the company regulations. In other words, there were specific instructions telling the workers how to handle comments with certain words. The company argued, “It was necessary to manage the quality of the monitoring.” However, the commission also considered how the company instructed the monitors to make corrections when they handled a comment in a manner different from what was stipulated in the guidelines and reflected such incidents in work assessments. The fact that the outcome of the monitors’ performance all went to the company and that A and his colleagues only received a certain amount of money in exchange for the work also provided grounds for recognizing them as employees.

Another reason was the fact that they worked at a designated time and place. The company designated fixed working hours and the workers reported the start and end of their time on duty. According to the contract, A and his colleagues were to work wherever they wanted, but due to the nature of the monitoring task, security was important. So in reality, they had to work from home. The commission also referred to the fact that A and his colleagues had worked at the company for four years and seven months, much longer than the two-year maximum for fixed-term employment, and recognized them as employees who signed an employment contract without a fixed period.

Based on these views, the National Labor Relations Commission concluded that the company’s notice to terminate the contract was unfair, since A and his colleagues were employees. To lay off a worker, the company has to notify the worker on the reason and time in writing, but the company ignored this, and there was also no evidence to recognize this as a legitimate lay-off.

Online monitors who had suffered from unstable employment conditions welcomed the latest ruling. Yu Geom-wu, vice chairman of the IT union explained, “Monitoring involves frequent reports and instructions, and when there is a mistake, there is immediate feedback,” and said, “It is significant for this is an official recognition of the employee status (of special-forms of employment in the IT industry).” Ha Eun-seong, a labor attorney at GweolliChatgi Union (Rights-seeking Union) said, “There are many cases where companies don’t pay for weekly leaves because they sign freelance contracts to manage online comments, websites, blogs, and online communities.” She further said, “The latest decision is meaningful for it broadened the concept of “designated workplaces” to include working from home and it is also related to other earlier cases that recognized the employee status of workers who signed subcontracts.”