Workshop for counselors of Hotline for Equality: problems and improvement tasks of discrimination correcting systems related to Temporary Employment Protection Act

 

Workshop for counselors of Hotline for Equality: problems and improvement tasks of discrimination correcting systems related to Temporary Employment Protection Act

One year has been passed since the Temporary Employment Protection Act was put into force. The previous government mentioned to regulate discriminations against irregular workers, focusing on discrimination when the Act was enacted. Lee Myeong Bak government also declared to expand the number of irregular workers to achieve flexible employment, and solve related all kinds of problems through discrimination correcting systems. Discrimination correcting systems are viewed like a panacea for measurement for irregular employment. However, the discrimination correcting system has had many problems for one year.

Hereupon, counselors of the Hotline for Equality looked at problems regarding discrimination correcting policies for irregular workers, and probed for alternatives of discrimination correcting systems.  Labor lawyer, Park Jooyoung analyzed detailed cases regarding discrimination against irregular workers, brought before local labor relations commissions and national labor relations commission in charge of deciding discrimination correcting matters, pointed out the problems and suggested how to improve them. Currently, only one case has been considered as a discrimination correcting case, and in other cases their discrimination correction applications have been rejected at the cost of job security. Mr. Park mentioned that discrimination is not corrected nor exchanged for job security in the other cases, but all of them are deteriorated and compensated for money at the cost of job discontinuity.

Mr. Park Jooyoung broached discrimination correcting system for discussion as follows: ① Labor relations commissions examine if a party involved is appropriate in a case brought before the commissions. What is a problem is that the party involved is not considered as an irregular discrimination correcting applicant but a regular worker if fixing an employment term is viewed just as formal. However, there are many obstacles that applicants have to overcome. ② It is not easy to find a regular worker who can be compared with the applicants. That's because it is very hard for just a irregular workers to gain detailed wage levels earned by regular workers who do the same job. Nevertheless, labor relations commissions demand applicants to show one specific example of a regular worker for comparison, and applicants have to show comparison target until labor relations commissions decide if the comparison target is appropriate and they are satisfied ③ judgment standards by the commissions are quite formal and limited even though detailed comparison targets with regular workers are set up. The commission decides if there is discrimination through focusing on discrimination rather than if there is similarity through finding how similar two jobs are.  In the process, since workplaces investigation by examiners is quite formal, formal documents are more influential than actual tasks in deciding if there is discrimination. 

Mr. Park Jooyoung highlighted there are following procedural problems and  improvements on these are urgently needed in relation to discrimination correcting applications submitted to labor relations commissions: ① the problem that discrimination correction is called for to only individual workers ② individual workers are forced to provide comparison targets ③ the roles of examiners and problems of insufficient workplaces investigation ④ forced mediation or rejection of mediation applications by applicants ⑤ Exclusion from labor and/ or user-side commissioners in discrimination mediation meetings ⑥ the problems of fulfillment and effectiveness of discrimination correcting orders. 

Counselors of the Hotline for Equality had a good time to grasp what should be changed through looking at discrimination correcting situations of irregular workers in this workshop.