The Labor Code 2019 (“LC 2019”) has a number of new regulations in terms of the internal labour regulations (“ILRs”) that employer needs to be aware and comply with the law.
1. Subjects are mandatory to issue the ILRs
Unlike LC 2012 regulating that only enterprises employing 10 or more employees are required to enact the ILRs, the current LC 2019 requires the employers to issue the ILRs and if the employers use from 10 employees, the ILRs must be written.
Thus, it can be understood that according to the LC 2019, all employers have to issue the ILRs. In case there are less than 10 employees, the employers can optionally issue a written or a verbal ILRs. In addition, it is mandatory for the employer to issue the written ILR if there are from 10 employees.
2. Main contents of the ILRs
According to the LC 2019, there are 9 mandatory contents of ILRs including:
(i) Working time and rest time;
(ii) Order in workplace;
(iii) Occupational safety and health;
(iv) Preventing sexual harassment in workplace; procedures for handling sexual harassment in the workplace;
(v) Protection of assets and business secrets, technology secrets, intellectual property of the employer;
(vi) Assigning the employees to perform a work which is not prescibed in the labour contract.
(vii) Breaches of labour disciplinary regulations by the employees and disciplinary measures against breaches of the labour disciplinary regulations;
(viii) Material responsibility;
(ix) Competence for handling labour discipline.
Compared with the LC 2012, the ILRs according to the LC 2019 has 3 new contents mentioned in section (iv) Preventing sexual harassment in workplace; procedures for handling sexual harassment in the workplace; (vi) Assigning the employees to perform a work which is not prescibed in the labour contract and (ix) Competence for the handling labor discipline.
3. Registration of the ILRs
According to the LC 2019, the employers use from 10 employees must register the ILRs, whereas the employers use less than 10 employees is not required to register the ILRs.
Competent authority of registering the ILR is labour management authority of provincial-level People’s committee (“PC”), namely Department of Labour, War Invalids and Social Affairs. However, the Department of Labour, War Invalids and Social Affairs can also delegate the labour management authority to district-level PC (Division of Labour - Invalids and Social Affairs) to perform the registration of the ILRs.