South Korea’s Central Labor Relations Commission has recognized a home-based telephone counselor for an online educational materials company as an employee under the Labor Standards Act. The counselor worked for eight years under an outsourced contract and was paid according to performance, but the commission focused on the company’s actual management of the work rather than the contract label or payment method.
It also ruled that the company’s unilateral termination of the outsourcing agreement constituted unfair dismissal, in what was reported as the commission’s first such recognition for a home-based educational counselor.