'Part-time job will be more common'
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Gu Gyo-hyeon, president of Arbeit Workers Union
By Park Ji-won
Gu Gyo-hyeon, 38, president of the Arbeit Workers Union, said part-time workers will become a far more important resource in the future.
“We shouldn’t consider part-time workers as expandable who can be abandoned easily as we do now because they will become as ordinary as full-time workers as society changes,” Gu said in an interview.
Founded in January 2014 and authorized by the government as a labor union since July, the Union has been a voice for part-time workers to help improve their working conditions. Through campaigns, the union aims to double the nation’s minimum wage from the current 5,580 won.
“We will need less human labor in the future because machines are replacing people. We seek to make a society where workers’ basic rights are protected as stipulated by law,” he said.
In Korea, many mom-and-pop shops and retailers hire people as part-timers to cut wage costs. It is common that part-timers work under unfair business conditions because they are paid around 5,000 won an hour and can easily be sacked.
The union provides consultant services for members to exercise their rights such as receiving overdue wages. It currently has some 350 members ― most of them students in their early 20s.
Gu, head of the union since its foundation, has been organizing campaigns such as “five bad franchise chains for part-timers” and protesting against large lobby groups for owners.
He was even arrested and spent time in jail over his labor activities.
“I never imaged myself taking to the street to protest for the rights of marginal workers. I was a silent boy in school. However, I felt I needed to do something for this society while serving as a policeman during my military service and witnessing unfair things such as the demolishing of old people’s houses to build oil refinery facilities.
“My father became disabled when I was young. I think this caused me to work as an activist. I made my choice to live like this to feel happy.”
He plans to conduct a large campaign against McDonald’s to pressure them to protect part-time workers in accordance with the Labor Law together with the Services Employees International Union from 2015.
“We should create guidelines and share the idea that we need narrow the gap between people’s incomes. To do so, we need to pay part-timers more. That is our slogan.”