Last Dec. 21, E-Land Park CEO Park Hyeong-sik was dismissed for the exploitation of approximately 84 billion Korean won from part-time employees working in company restaurants. These constant delays and lack of payment are a few of the many troubles that come with part-time job market. These ill conditions are making many people in their twenties suffer at their part-time jobs. The Argus scoured through the part-time job market and captured its problems and their causes.

 
What is troubling the part-timers?

-Part-time employees’ unpaid wages
 Part-time employees are not given a variety of legal benefits and are being paid below the minimum wage. When part-time employees satisfy certain conditions, they are to receive benefits such as weekly benefits, night-work allowances, and severance pay according to the law. However, a large number of part-time employees are missing those benefits. For instance, weekly benefits are the amount an employee can receive if one is eligible for benefits for a week, and one’s benefits should not be reduced for any reason according to the Labor Standards Act. If a part-time employee has worked over 15 hours in one day, he or she should get over a day of holiday pay. In reality, unpaid weekly benefits hit the highest mark in terms of unfulfilled labor conditions on a survey conducted by the part-time job portal site ‘Albamon.’ Regarding the night-work allowance, 37 percent of employees responded that they did not grant full night-work allowances in the report of rival site ‘Alba Heaven.’

Severance pay poses another issue of non-payment. According to the law of employment retirement benefit security, anyone who has worked over 15 hours a week over three months has a right to severance pay if they are part-time employees or not. At the Seoul Labor Center, 20 percent of their entire consultation services are related to severance pay, indicating that a lot of part-time employees get none or received delayed severance pay.

Not only are the benefits not being paid, but the part-time employees are not even provided with the minimum wage. In 2016, the Korea Labor and Society Institute estimated that about 40 percent of college students received pay below minimum wage. People in their twenties are taking the harshest blow in terms of non-payment.
Kim Young-sun, a student from the Department of Law at Dankook University, vented about her actual experience. “I worked in a photo studio for three weeks before getting kicked out. I got 100,000 won, when I should have gotten 160,000 won at the minimum level.”

-Labor supervisors’ insufficient handling of part-time employees’ grievances
Part-time employees are being mentally and financially mistreated by the employers and customers. In a report about interactive employment by the recruitment business Job Korea, about 86 percent of part-time employees have experienced irrational rage and immoral disregard from employers and customers. Even if the part-time employees report these unfair acts, those reports are not being taken care of properly. Exactly who is taking care of the reports?

Labor supervisors oversee the labor relationships and deal with reports from part-time employees in the Labor Administration. According to a survey done by Alba Union, 99 out of 100 part-time employees who have reported grievances about their workplace to the Ministry of Employment and Labor had received unreasonable treatment by their labor supervisors. Labor supervisors regularly induce an ‘agreement’ for part-time employees to receive a payment below the deserved full wage from the employer.

An official in the JoongAng Labor Attorney’s Office said, “Labor supervisors often persuade part-time employees to settle an agreement with employers. Such agreement is a faster process than a lawyering-up and reduces costs.”

The second instance of labor supervisors’ performing poorly is what is referred to as a “forced three-party encounter with the employers” which took 17 percent. Even though part-time employees had refused to meet their employers after reporting them, the labor supervisors  insisted that the three-party encounter was customary. Urging part-time employees to withdraw the charge against employers also took five percent.

On top of that, the report process takes too long according to part-time employees. In 2016 the Korea Labor and Society Institute’s ‘Labor Supervisor Business Intensity State of Affairs,’ the labor supervisors’ average report stated that the process took 46.1 days, which is over a month. This is mainly because the labor supervisors can delay the investigation of a report up to 25 days, depending on their authority. Delay of an investigation occurred for 21.2 percent of respondents.

-Insufficient preparation in the case of part-time employees’ injuries
The preparation for part-time employees’ injuries is insufficient. Part-time employees often get hurt in the restaurant industry, clinical trials, the delivery industry, convenience store, the distribution industry, hotels and the wedding hall industry. In order to prevent these injuries, the current occupation safety and health acts require businesses to carry out safety education over eight hours in length. In spite of that, 70 percent of part-time employees did not receive safety education such as emergency management against conflagration or accidents. In relatively dangerous businesses such as cooking, delivery, and manual labor jobs, more than half of the employees turned out to be working without safety education.

Part-time employees who were given the full safety equipment for their delivery job turned out to be in the minority, too. In the survey, ‘safety equipment partly provided (43.4%)’ scored the highest. Next was ‘safety equipment not provided during delivery (31.7%).’ On the other hand, ‘safety equipment fully provided’ scored 17.4 percent, signaling that the majority of part-time employees are doing delivery jobs without all the necessary safety equipment.

What has caused this trouble?

-Ineffective Labor Standards Act
Employers are not paying the minimum wage and providing the required benefits to part-time employees because they can avoid legal punishment. As stated by the Minimum Wages Act, an employer who has failed to pay the minimum wage can be held for up to three years of imprisonment or may face a penalty of 20,000,000 won. Similar laws apply to other benefits as well.
However, this only applies in cases in which the wages are ‘not paid.’ If the employer is reported for non-payment, the employer can just pay the wage right away and not be punished. Simply put, if the employer takes a corrective measure, the employer can avoid penalties. Therefore, the employers have nothing to lose in their attempt not to pay the full wages. In 2016, over 700 businesses violated the Minimum Wages Act, but those under penalty or doubly indicted turned out to be only 1.7 percent. The penalty rate for the Minimum Wages Act has not surpassed two percent over the last 10 years.

-Labor supervisors in an inadequate labor environment
The comprehensive cause behind the inducement of ‘agreement,’ unfair or delayed report processing and a lack of safety preparation is the labor supervisors’ work overload. Labor supervisors are in charge of excessive tasks, so they cannot precisely and quickly process a report one by one and investigate all the labor environments of workplaces. There are over 300,000 reports a year. A single labor supervisor has to process 45.4 reports every month, which is three to four reports every day. Over the last five years from 2010-2015, the number of reports skyrocketed over 10 percent, but the number of new supervisors added was as few as five people. Labor supervisors work an average of 13 hours overtime every week. It is common for them to work at nighttime and on weekends and holidays. Ironically, a lot of labor supervisors fall ill due to their inadequate labor environment and some transfer to other jobs, away from chronic overwork.

 Labor supervisors also have the duty to investigate the labor environments of workplaces and check the implementation of safety education and the supply of safety equipment. However, the number of labor supervisors falls short of what is required. Currently, there are 970 labor supervisors. A single supervisor manages over 10,000 businesses in Seoul. The workplaces supervised by the Ministry of Employment and Labor had never gone beyond 20,000 from 2013 to 2016. Thus, 80 percent of the labor supervisors need supplemental manpower according to the 2016 Korea Labor Institute report.

Foul incidents are occurring in the rightful exchange of labor and wages between part-time employers and employees. In order to lessen part-time employees’ burden, we must create a desirable part-time job culture for all.

Reporter of National Section