“Quarantine obligations are over, telecommuting is over”… Office worker can’t rest even if they are Covid19 negative
As the quarantine obligation for confirmed COVID-19 patients disappeared from the 1st, it became a situation where confirmed patients had to go to work instead of working from home.
As a result, there are voices from office workers who say, “Do you have to go to work even if you are sick with corona?”
As of 0:00 on the 1st, the government lowered the Corona 19 crisis warning level from ‘serious’ to ‘warning’. Along with this, the 7-day quarantine obligation for confirmed COVID-19 patients has been converted to a 5-day recommendation. This means that even if you are diagnosed with Corona 19, you can leave the house.
In line with this, a large company in Gyeonggi-do announced at the end of last month that it had changed its company policy, such as “reducing the quarantine period from 7 days to 3 days in case of confirmation” and “reducing work from home for 3 days to work normally if a cohabitant is confirmed”.
A 30-year-old employee of the company, Kim Mo, expressed displeasure, saying, “I was sick for more than five days when I got COVID-19, but three days of quarantine seems short.”
Mr. Kim (28), who works at a large company in Seoul, also said, “In the past, I could use sick leave by saying, ‘I have corona,’ but now I have the burden of proving how sick I am.”
Those who have not yet been confirmed for Corona 19 or who have been confirmed for the past few days are responding that they are “somewhat unfortunate.”
Mr. Park (31), an office worker who has never been infected with Corona 19, said, “The pain is the same when you get Corona 19, but it is unfair that you may not be able to rest now and you have to take notice and rest.”
In the online community for office workers, ‘Blind’, posts were posted one after another stating that the company announced ‘suspending public service support’ and ‘using annual leave’ at the same time as the government’s quarantine guidelines were switched.
One user posted a post saying, “I was taking a break from Corona two days ago, but this morning I received a notification from the company saying, ‘You can go to work and take a break after receiving permission from the department head to see your physical condition.'”
This user complained, “I wonder where the 5-day quarantine recommendation was sold, while others took two or three times, I worked like an ant for ‘not caught’, but I’m angry.”
As companies that are trying to abolish telecommuting with the government’s official endemic declaration and return to a full office work system invite their employees to the office one after another, there is a great resistance from employees who are already accustomed to telecommuting.
A company in Jongno-gu, Seoul recently announced that it would end telecommuting, excluding corona19 confirmed patients.
Mr. Kim (29), an office worker, said, “There were times when I felt that working from home was more efficient because I was already exhausted by the time I went to work because my workplace was far away.”
