May Day Blues
Korea Has Long Way to Go to Guarantee Workers’ Rights
Workers mark May Day on Thursday. But the festive mood has disappeared in South Korea due to the gloomy economic outlook. They feel left out in the cold as the gap between the rich and the poor continues to widen. The middle class has shrunk rapidly since the 1997-98 financial crisis. Regrettably, the income brackets are divided into the 20 percent rich and the 80 percent poor. Ordinary workers' quality of living has deteriorated because of soaring costs of housing, education and daily necessities.
Non-regular workers and migrant laborers feel a sense of deprivation since they still suffer widespread discrimination in wages, working conditions and welfare benefits. About 8.4 million people, or 37 percent of the nation's total workforce, are non-regular workers. It is disturbing that they are forced to become ``second-rate'' citizens as their wages are 60 percent of what regular workers make.
Various types of discrimination against non-regular workers and immigrant workers have already emerged as one of some serious issues posing a grave threat to social cohesion and integration. However, all the three parties ― government, management and labor ― have done little to protect the rights of the socially weak. The government began to enforce a non-regular worker protection law last year. But most employers have ignored the law only to seek their own interests, thus turning a blind eye to the plight of these workers.
Migrant workers are in a worse situation. Their numbers are estimated at 590,000, or 1.2 percent of the nation's total population and 2.6 percent of the country's entire workforce. An estimated 230,000, or 38.9 percent of the immigrants are undocumented workers. They came here to seek the ``Korean Dream,'' but they soon found a miserable life waiting for them. Most of them are experiencing exploitation, abuse of human rights, occupational accidents and disease.
They do ``dirty, difficult and dangerous'' jobs as South Koreans shun the so-called 3-D work. Small and medium companies in the country cannot survive without migrant workers due to soaring labor costs. But no one is willing to recognize their toil and contribution to the Korean economy. It is obvious that the nation is not able to join the ranks of advanced countries and move toward a multicultural society without guaranteeing the rights of immigrant laborers as well as non-regular workers.
The country is notorious for long working hours. South Koreans worked an average of 2,357 hours in 2006, the longest among the 30 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). It is also blamed for higher rates of industrial accidents. According to the Korea Occupational Safety and Health Agency, 2,406 workers were killed due to work-related accidents and illnesses last year. The figure means that an average seven workers died every day due to occupational mishaps.
Labor unions launched a series of events around the country to pay tribute to the victims of industrial accidents on the World Day for Safety and Health at Work that fell on April 28. The events will last until the May Day celebrations. It's time for the nation to better protect workers' rights, abide by international labor standards and forge cooperative labor-management ties. Only after that can South Korea become the world's economic powerhouse.