ed Temporary workers’ woes

Labor policy should focus on ending discrimination

Given the mounting popular complaints about economic difficulties, most voters had predicted the ruling party would lose the Seoul mayoral election last week. But a near 10-percent margin was beyond anyone’s expectations. The latest government report shows why.

According to Statistics Korea, the number of temporary workers has topped 6 million, almost one in every three workers here. Add to this the 2 million ``virtual” temps, and their total increases to 8 million, or one in every two. Considering these non-regular laborers receive wages about 50 percent of regular workers, half of Korean workers are leading half lives. Now the gap seems not as wide as it first did.

The biggest employers of irregular workers are large manufacturers, such as automakers, shipbuilders and consumer electronics firms mostly affiliated with family-controlled conglomerates. Thinking Korea could rapidly pull itself out of global recession owing to these industries, it is evident whom the nation should thank for it.

Hyundai Motor and Samsung Electronics also couldn’t have registered record-high earnings without these workers who got half the wages for exactly the same work.

Until when should Korea continue this exploitation of labor on a national level, however?

Yes, the Korean economy no longer relies on mass labor thanks to rapid automation and shift to tertiary industries led by the services sector. But the nation can ill afford to allow chaebol and other large employers to thrive at the expense of numerous workers struggling under near-absolute poverty. This is why the OECD, in its ``Social Policy Report for Korea,” cited non-regular workers, whose share is twice its members’ average level, as a factor adversely affecting both growth and distribution.

This is not to say the government and political community have sat idle.

But their measures have either been temporary or unbinding or both. The government ought to reinforce the rules it has introduced without exceptions and with consistency. Most of all, it must eradicate the irregular employment practice called the ``in-house subcontracting,” in which automakers and shipbuilders use non-regular workers supplied by manpower agents instead of directly hiring them. These ``dispatched workers” receive far smaller wages for the same labor, live under extreme job insecurity and never dream of forming unions.

The widespread impoverishment of workers may be good for corporate bottom lines in the short run. The shortsighted practice, however, does far more harm than good to the nation, by sharply weakening social cohesion, and hurting the economy by reducing private consumption. Most serious of all, these irregular workers say they don’t feel like doing their best which explains in part the frequent recalls of cars and home appliances.

It’s past the time that the government tried to contain the increase of irregular workers to a minimum and eliminate the discrimination for the existing ones by removing gaps between wages for the same labor in a given time, and extended social safety nets to these alienated workers.

At stake is not a political party’s electoral performance but the national economy’s sustainable growth.