South Korean “non-regular” workers face mass job losses

[Hannah Bell]

After weeks of protest blockages of parliament by opposition lawmakers, the right-wing government of President Lee Myung-bak has delayed until September a vote on legislation making it easier for employers to lay off casual and temporary workers.

The parliamentary standoff has highlighted the political instability produced in South Korea by the global economic crisis, which has seen more than 300 “non-regular” workers losing their jobs every day. Heavily dependent on manufactured exports, the economy is officially forecast to contract by 1.5 percent during 2009...

The number of contract workers is estimated at 5.4 million, or one third of the country’s total workforce. They generally earn around 1.2 million won ($US960) a month, or just 60 percent of the average income of regular workers. In addition, they have significantly lower health care benefits and less unemployment insurance.

More than 50 percent of non-regular workers are working on the minimum wage, or about $3.20 per hour. Even state enterprises like Korea Post have replaced thousands of regular workers with temporary staff in recent years.

With the support of the trade union bureaucracy, the DP and its predecessors ...implemented free market reforms in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis and destroyed the previous life-long employment system.

...After a wave of militant strikes by predominately female workers in Homever, New Core and E-land department stores, as well as the high-speed rail KTX in 2006 — sections of the working class not controlled by the old manufacturing unions — former President Roh pushed the Non-Regular Workers Protection Act in the name of establishing rights for the expanding contract workforce.

In reality, the law offered no protection for millions of workers. The New York Times on July 23 noted: “As South Korea struggles with the global economic downturn, temporary workers are bearing the brunt of corporate cost-cutting... In Seoul, subway commuters cringe at a relatively new scene: homeless people lining up at soup kitchens or sleeping in paper boxes.”

Kim Joo-won, who lost his $3 an hour minimum-wage car assembling job at Donghee Auto in March, told the newspaper that he and several other temporary workers had been staging protests every day. At first, he chained himself to a factory column, but security guards cut the chain, hauled him away and threw him out the back gate. “They treat us non-regular workers like used toilet paper,” Kim explained.

Living on just $630 a month in unemployment benefits, which end in three months, Kim explained why he and other workers wanted their jobs back: “If I give up, I will drift from one temporary job to another for the rest of my life. If you are a non-regular in South Korea, your life is second class.”

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jul2009/kore-j29.shtml