A court has ruled that two cram schools operated by one director, 25 minutes apart on foot, cannot be viewed as a single business site.
According to legal sources on the 7th, the Seoul Administrative Court's Administrative Division 12 (Chief Judge Kang Jae-won) on Oct. 2 ruled against instructor A in a suit to cancel a retrial decision on relief from unfair dismissal filed against the National Labor Relations Commission (NLRC).
A was a part-time instructor who had worked at C Cram School, operated by Director B, since December 2023. The following February, A received a dismissal notice from Director B due to a parental complaint.
A applied for relief to the Seoul Regional Labor Relations Commission, saying the dismissal was unfair. However, the Seoul Regional Labor Relations Commission dismissed the application on the grounds that C Cram School had fewer than five regular employees and was a business site. Under the Labor Standards Act, most provisions, such as the ban on unfair dismissal, do not apply to business sites with fewer than five employees.
The NLRC also dismissed the retrial request for the same reason. A then filed an administrative suit, asking the court to view it as a single business site by including D Cram School, a 25-minute walk away and operated by Director B.
The court found that it is difficult to view them as a single business site. The court cited as grounds that the two cram schools were separately registered as businesses, that their staff compositions were not identical, and that there had been no personnel exchanges between them.
The court said, "It is insufficient to recognize the two cram schools as a single business site based only on some facts, and there is no other evidence to acknowledge this," and held that the application for relief from unfair dismissal does not apply.