By Lee Tae-hoon
The government will allow migrant workers, most likely from June this year, to change their workplaces without restrictions if they experienced discrimination at work or employers violated labor laws, a ruling party lawmaker said Monday.
Rep. Kang Sung-chun of the governing Grand National Party (GNP) noted that migrant workers with an E-9 visa will also need only to stay in their home countries for three months to renew their work visa, instead of the current six months, from the time their work permit expires.
The labor-activist-turned politician submitted a bill that would ease restrictions on work visas for migrants in October and the legislation passed the National Assembly in a floor vote of 163-0 with one abstention last Thursday.
The bill will take effect five months after promulgation which is expected to take place within days.
“I proposed the bill in hopes of preventing diligent migrant workers from receiving unfair treatment during their stay here and encouraging them to return to Korea,” Kang said.
The workers have been permitted to change their workplaces only up to three times during their first-three year work permit here and twice more if they extend their visa for another two years.
This left room for employers to infringe on the rights of migrant workers, who are vulnerable to salary gouging, harassment and overtime work without due financial compensation.
Once the new legislation enters into force, they will be able to switch their jobs as much as they need if their employer breaches regulations to be set by the Ministry of Employment and Labor (MOEL).
A considerable number of foreigners have been expelled from the country as a result of circumstances where they had no choice but to walk out of their workplaces.
The number of E-9 visas, a non-professional work permit granted mostly for jobs that most Koreans avoid, issued in 2008 stood at 75,024, followed by 63,323 in 2009 and 40,457 in 2010.
The MOEL estimates that the number of migrant workers whose E-9 visa expires this year will reach 67,117, up from 33,941 in 2011.
Kim Jin-seon, a researcher at the National Assembly Research Service, said that Kang’s legislation will help reduce the number of illegal migrant workers among E-9 visa holders as it offers greater flexibility in employment.
Data shows that more than 25 percent of E-9 visa holders overstay in Korea after their work permit expires.
The revision bill states that migrant workers can switch jobs without any penalty or disadvantage if “the employer breached work conditions or if migrant workers cannot continue to work in their workplace due to reasons that they are not responsible for.”
The move came amid pro-immigrant activists’ growing demand to scrap the regulation that infringes upon the freedom of job choice and the general pursuit of freedom guaranteed in the Constitution.
Kang’s bill also stipulates, migrant workers can return to Korea after three months if the previous employer expresses his or her willingness to rehire departing E-9 visa holders for a minimum of one year. Once the bill takes effect, those returning to Korea upon the employer’s request would be exempt from a Korean language test and job training course that migrant workers had to undergo again even if they had extensive work experience here.
Under the current law, migrant workers have to leave Korea for at least half a year once their five-year maximum allowable work stay ends.
Kang proposed to shorten the period to one month, but the MOEL demanded three months to adhere to the government’s policy of rotating workers and preventing their permanent stay.