Reform Party candidate criticized over dual wage proposal

Members of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions and human rights activists for migrant workers hold signs urging presidential candidates to improve workers' rights during a press conference at its headquarters in Seoul, Thursday. Courtesy of Korean Confederation of Trade Unions

A powerful labor group and human rights activists for migrant workers are criticizing Reform Party presidential candidate Lee Jun-seok over his campaign pledge to introduce a separate minimum wage system for noncitizens.

Lee, the former leader of the People Power Party, advocates for a tiered minimum wage for foreign migrant workers, suggesting pay could vary by origin country or skill set. He argues this would ease burdens on small businesses and alleviate labor shortages. His proposal faces strong opposition from human rights groups, who condemn it as discriminatory and a violation of international labor standards.

During a press conference Thursday at the headquarters of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, which has more than 1 million members, its representatives called the idea “unconstitutional” and urged the presidential hopeful to respect their human rights.

“This election should be about ending the politics of discrimination and hate and moving toward a society where the rights of all workers are respected. But instead, we’re moving backward,” the organization said in a statement. “There is a candidate who is even making an unconstitutional pledge to suspend the minimum wage for migrant workers for up to 10 years through the creation of the ‘E-9-11 visa.’ This is nothing less than a new form of state-sponsored slavery and a direct denial of migrant workers’ labor rights.”

This comes a week after Lee announced that, if elected, he would revive domestic manufacturing by offering cheaper labor to Korean companies currently operating in lower-cost countries like China and Vietnam.

That pledge, according to Udaya Rai, head of the Migrants’ Trade Union, reflects Lee’s belief that the labor of foreign workers is simply a commodity — and should be treated as such.

“Labor shortages, population decline and regional extinction crises have been promoted as reasons for new immigration policies, but in reality, the government is just trying to expand the number of migrant workers who have no labor rights and are subject to exploitation and discrimination,” he said.

Rai lamented that neither of the presidential candidates from the country’s two major parties appears to be interested in reforming the “discriminatory” system, in which migrants are not even permitted to change jobs on their own and face other risks of discrimination.

In the list of 10 requests for all presidential hopefuls, activists at the conference said migrant workers, including those without visas to remain in Korea, should be embraced as members of society and that the next administration should offer a path for undocumented people to stay.

They said the current catch-and-deport system against undocumented noncitizens is flawed and there should be a new approach to dealing with the issue.

“We all know that the majority of those who became undocumented initially came as legal foreign workers with E-9, F-6 and D-4 visas, but due to numerous flaws in these (immigration) laws, they were forced into undocumented status,” a representative of Kasammako, a group of Filipino workers in Korea, said. “They are the victims of these laws and should be granted justice, not treated as criminals.”

They also called for a complete ban on using temporary buildings to house migrant workers and a government commitment to the Forced Labour Convention of the International Labour Organization, among other demands.