There continues to be confirmation of the details about how conglomerates illegally use outsourced workers. According to an announcement by the Labor Ministry on Wednesday, GM Daewoo has been illegally using approximately 1,000 workers from another company for production work. Last year it Hyundai Motors was discovered to have used workers from other companies on a large scale, and last month Cheil Industries was caught doing the same. Kia Motors is also currently under investigation.
It is an open secret that large manufacturing companies are using workers from other companies right next to their own full-fledged employees. Current laws on outsourcing labor allows for the practice in only 26 types of jobs, including cleaning and guard work, but in the workplace that law has long been a scrap of paper. The Labor Ministry's inquiries actually feel late in coming.
Even more a problem is that even when there are government decisions finding the activity to be illegal nothing much changes. Companies do not hire the workers as regular employees or hire other regular employees even after being officially told they violating the law. Usually they completely separate their own employees and irregular workers in the work process so as to make the outsourcing be fully "contract work" and avoid the law. Some irregular workers, the victims in the situation, even lose their jobs as a result.
The Labor Ministry says there is nothing effective it can do beyond filing complaints against such companies, but that is just an excuse. In September 2003 the Supreme Court said that anyone who is in an actual working relationship for more than two years with the same employer must be formally hired. The problem is the government's will in making changes. The problem of irregular employment is at the center of the issue.
The government has submitted legislation to the National Assembly that would allow outsourcing of jobs in almost all types of employment. The idea is to ease restrictions and deal with the illegalities that way instead of uprooting them. That kind of thinking has the order of things backwards. It is not too late for the government to stop trying to make laws on the use of irregular workers worse than it already is and instead exert itself on uprooting illegal labor practices.
The Hankyoreh, 15 April 2005.
[Translations by Seoul Selection (PMS)]
[Editorial] Uprooting Illegal Use of 'Irregular Workers' |
