The mere fact that a fixed-term employment contract is rewritten does not mean the 2-year period of continuous employment is calculated from the beginning. If an employee has worked continuously through repeated renewals of employment contracts at a workplace subject to the Fixed-Term Workers Act, the entire period is aggregated, and if the worker is employed for more than 2 years without exception reasons prescribed by law, they are considered a worker who has entered into an employment contract without a fixed term. However, the scope of application to the workplace and the exceptions must be examined first, and it cannot be explained that this conclusion alone makes all conditions, such as wages and job rank, identical to those of existing regular employees. The continuity of actual work and application requirements are more important issues than the number of contract documents.
One-Line Conclusion
When an employee continuously works while repeatedly renewing employment contracts for the same employer, the 2 years are not recalculated based solely on the start date of the new contract. Article 4 of the Act on the Protection, etc. of Fixed-Term and Part-Time Employees sets the total period of continuous employment as the standard in cases of repeated renewals. Therefore, the circumstance that contracts were newly written every year does not in itself serve as grounds for eliminating the previous employment period.
To apply this answer, three conditions must be read together. First, whether the limit on the use period under the Fixed-Term Workers Act applies to the workplace in question; second, what the actual period of continuous employment is; and third, whether there is a statutory exception allowing employment as a fixed-term worker exceeding 2 years. Omitting any of these would lump different employment situations into the same conclusion. In particular, the standard prescribed by law, "in cases of using [a worker] exceeding 2 years," is more accurate than the everyday expression "when 2 years are reached."
