ED Apply equal labor rights

Time to eliminate discrimination against workers at small firms

The Union for Rights, a labor group, filed a petition with the Constitutional Court, Friday, claiming that a law excluding workers at businesses with fewer than five employees from enjoying substitute holidays was unconstitutional. The law on public holidays promulgated last month calls for designating alternative statutory day-offs for public holidays that fall on weekends but excludes firms with fewer than five workers from its application. The labor group has raised the question of whether it is in the spirit of the Constitution to refuse to guarantee fundamental rights for workers just because they work for small companies.

Specifically, the union cited Article 4 of the Public Holiday Act as violating or infringing on the people's “right to rest.” However, Article 4 does not specify the targets of its application. The legal grounds for discriminating against employees at firms with fewer than five workers is based on the Labor Standards Act.

Article 11 of the Labor Standards Act reads: “This act shall apply to all businesses or workplaces in which not less than five employees are regularly employed.” The act is the basis and standard for all labor-related laws. It is nonsense for such a law to serve as the grounds for discriminating against workers. A case in point is an act on serious industrial accidents legislated early this year. This act does not apply to small workplaces with few than five people, while these in fact account for 30 percent of fatal industrial accidents.

These microbusinesses pay no annual allowances and are exempted from various mandatory employee education programs such as training on the prevention of sexual harassment and other work place discriminatory behavior. In 2021, 3.5 million people work at these smallest of firms, accounting for about 30 percent of the country's entire workforce. An application of basic rights to them will naturally come as a considerable burden on small firms. However, making their workers “second-class citizens” based on the size of their employers' companies is hardly different from “discrimination by the state.” The government should make efforts to address such problems to eliminate any form of discrimination against workers at small firms.