If you want to establish the right kind of policy for a given problem, you need to begin with an accurate understand the exact nature of the problem. A Japanese civil servant in Tokyo who spent time living on the street so he could learn about the homeless once said, "There's no reason to not have basic data, but the reason you don't have it anyway is because once you do, policy has to change so that problems are fixed." According to him, civil society needs to demand the release of accurate data in order to solve social problems.
It almost sounds as if he is thinking of our labor ministry when he says that. When it began pursuing legislation that would widen the range of irregular jobs in the country it said the bill would eradicate discrimination against irregular workers, but it failed to explain what was the basis for saying so. At least the report it had the Korea Labor Institute write was released early last month after the legislation passed in the National Assembly's Environment and Labor Committee. The report, it turns out, was written late last year, and there were even accusations of a deliberate attempt to cover it up, since it stated that there were not ample protections for irregulars.
Furthermore, it has been learned that the labor ministry does not even have an accurate understanding of the situation for irregular "dispatched workers." It turns out the ministry's statistics on irregular workers in the Ansan area were a complete mess, because instead of working to ascertain the truth for itself, it relied on the contents of a report by a company in the business of loaning out irregular workers. That kind of hack job probably does not happen just in Ansan.
It would be futile to expect a government that is so clueless about the realities of the situation to produce policy that is the right solution. There is nothing strange at all about the fact irregular workers are so strongly opposed to the bill, even when it was supposedly written for their benefit. How can legislation that was drafted without knowledge of actual conditions and without review of the potential effects help the people it is supposed to help? There should be no need to explain at how we need to demand of this irresponsible government that it first ascertain the truth about the situation for irregular workers.
The Hankyoreh, 19 April 2006.
[Translations by Seoul Selection]
[Editorial] Knowing Nothing, Gov't Wants More Irregular Workers |
