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2002-10-28 14:22:59, 조회 : 383 |
THE CHANGING POSITION OF KOREA IN THE WORLD ECONOMY
- IMPLICATIONS FOR WOMEN WORKERS IN KOREA
Rhie Chol Soon Maria (chairperson, Korean Women Workers Associations United)
1. Introduction on the Process of Industrial Development in South Korea
For the past three decades, South Korea's major strategy for economic development has been an outward-looking industrialization
which promotes labour-intensive export industries inanced directly
or indirectly by foreign capital. In the process, it launched a series of five year economic development plans. The first (1962-66)
and the second (1967-71) five-year plans emphasized industrial
growth. The third five-year plan (1972-76) emphasized balanced growth between the industrial and agricultural sectors and the fourth five-year plan (1977-81) stressed sustained economic growth and equity.
In this process Korean women have served as a significant labour force, well-disciplined and motivated with a relatively high level of education. Their contribution to the rapid economic growth is widely recognised. Although the extent and nature of Korean women's participation in the industrialization process may have been conditioned by Korea's unique tradition and history as a divided nation, a basic common trend has emerged throughout the Asian Countries in the structure of women 's labour participation. These strategies focused on labour-intensive
light industries in the sixties to the early seventies, and then on capital-intensive heavy industries in the late eventies.
Since the 1970s, the deepening industrialization has changed from a focus on traditional light industries to a concentration in modern heavy industries. By 1977, the share of light industries had decreased to 38.8%, while heavy industries accounted for 48.9% of industrial output. This reflected the structural change of the world manufacturing industry in the international division of labour as some of the heavy and chemical industries began to be transferred from the developed industrial countries to the developing countries. Under these circumstances, Korea planned to shed the light industries and build up an export-oriented structure in heavy and chemical industries. These industries consisted mainly of the labor-intensive industry sectors of electronics and ship-building rather than of capital intensive and technology intensive industries.
Korea's image of being a high-tech producer is belied by a few sobering realities; the best selling Hyundai Excel is one of Korea's best known exports, but its body styling is Italian in origin; its engine is designed by the Japanese firm Mitsubish and its tranmission is both designed and manufactured by mitsubishi. Most of the technological capabilities of other Korean electronics firms, infect, come from the Japan. The fact of the matter is that
Korea has not been able to graduate from being mainly assembly sites for foreign products, specifically Japanese. Nearly 30years after industrializing Korea is now even more dependent on foreign assistance.
The recent IMF package that South Korea accepted shows how this U.S orchestrated bailout is geared toward strengthening even more the foreign domination. In return for the money Seoul has agreed to open its market more to foreign goods and investors, and take measures to curb the ability of its conglomerates to expand. The IMF greement raised the percentage of a Korean company's stock that could be owned by foreigners to 50% immediately and to 55% next ear. Bankruptcies, already running at a high rate, are expected to skyrocket. The currency has devalued about 100% in relation to the dollar, layoffs will now be permitted to facilitate mergers and aquisition; interest rates have risen drastically, the government is announcing new cuts in public spending daily etc.
2. Women's Participation in the Economy
The labour-intensive, export-oriented industrialization has encouraged women's participation in labour generally. In 1960, women's labour participation was concentrated in the primary sector, agriculture and fishery. As industrialization advanced women's participation has increased in all secondary and tertiary sectors. The proportion of female workers in primary industry diminished from 69.6% in 1960 to 46.5% in 1980.
With the shift of labour from the rural sector, women employed in manufacturing industries increased sharply during the 20 years
from 12,000 to 1,000,000.
The increase of women's employment occurred mostly in traditional women's jobs and in the simple technical occupations - subordinate positions in the labour-intensive manufacturing sector. This means that in spite of the rapid industrial growth,
the area of women's employment was not particularly enlarged.
For example, changes of occupation from clerical to managerial jobs or from simple-skilled to technical jobs were impossible.
The interruption of employment due to marriage, childbirth or retirement was also commonplace. Consequently, women's employment increased mostly in the simple production occupations on the basis of temporary, short-term employment. In the period of 1976-1980
the female mobility from rural to urban areas shows a remarkable
increase numerically much greater than the male mobility for that
period. Of these rural to urban female migrants young, single women
in the age group of 15-24 occupy more than 40% - a significantly large proportion.
A study in 1980 indicated that more than two thirds of women factory workers who were employed at two major industrial estates were temporary residents ie. most of the workers were recruited from the rural sector.
3. Structural Change in Women's Work
In looking at the Korean experience of economic growth, we can see that massive rural-urban migration was one of its most distinguishing features. During the period of economic growth, the relative neglect of the agricultural sector has led to a situation of comparative agricultural stagnation and caused an immediate push for flow of out-migration, especially with regard to young, single
women from the rural area.
the proportion of urban residents in 1960 was 28% the percentage increased thereafter to 41.4% in 1970, and to 57.2% in 1980. The net result of these changes is also reflected in the labour force structure of industries. the related statistics confirm the assumption of a steady increase in the labour force in the urban sector, the relative proportion of the industrial labour force increased from 27.* in 1963 to 46.4 % in 1983 the ratio of labour population in the agricultural sector declined from 58.2% in 1963 to 30.7% in 1983. Of these rural to urban female migrants young, single women in the age group of 15-24 occupy more than 40% a significantly large proportion. In general, the typical profile of most Korean women's work throughout the period of industrialization can be summarized as follows: women's working conditions were difficult and discriminatory, leading many to stop working upon marriage; most of these women returned again to the labour market at a later stage. One of the underlying characteristics of married women's work was its lack of continuity as they alternated between different types of work and between the
formal and informal sectors. Married women had to accept the most
unstable, temporary jobs, according to the extent of their family
subsistence needs and maternal responsibilities. The careers of
these women remained unstable and intermittent and their former work experiences, if any, did not count toward better job opportunities or wage raises.
4. How Korean Government Responded
a)
Government promotion of Export-Oriented Industrialization within the context of a Five-year National plan.
b) Government creation of Free Trade Zones as an invitation for foreign investment and joint ventures.
c) Relocation of production by industrialists in Korea to areas within south and Southeast Asia and Central America with an abundant source of cheap labour.
d) Importation of cheap labour.( permission of the government immigration policy is an indication
of government support(
e) Passage of labour laws forbidding strikes and discouraging the formation of trade unions in the FTZ and amend labour sandal law.
5. Management strategies in Korea
Industrial restructuring and the subsequent decline of light manufacturing in Korea witnessed a change in labour processes, labour controls and employment patterns. Two theoretical concepts can help us to grasp these trends: first is the increasing degree of casualization or informalisation; and second is the simultaneous intensification of work.
Casualisation of labour use is a new management strategy used in past decades in East Asia to organize full-time work into part-time work or temporary work so as to avoid paying benefits, such as health insurance, maternity leave and paid holidays which are all required by law for full-time workers. These jobs have no special
skills requirement and workers can easily be replaced. Most of these jobs are designed for women who also have household and child care responsibilities. It is quite clear that the redundant women workers which resulted from the relocation of factories enabled employers in the service sectors to change their employment strategies and reorganize the nature and structure of jobs to be temporary and part-time. Casualisation is not only a strategy for cheapening the cost of production, but a trend for reconstructing the labor process into a more hierarchical and flexible one in which women workers have
little control over production and little bargaining power.
The work patterns can be summarized as follows:
-. Part-time jobs
-. short-time jobs
-. Keeping workers as apprentices or trainees at reduced wages long after they have leaned the job.
6. Impact on women workers
1. The unstable conditions facing Korean Women Workers
The first casualities of any period of industrial restructuring have been women workers, and especially following the government-let industrial restructuring since 1986, the unstable conditions facing women workers have deepened on a daily bases.
Job loss is common in Korea due to company shutdowns
or relocations of production. When companies shutdown, women workers experience mass lay offs and unpaid compensation.
Underemployment is a greater issue in Korea, where the relocation of factories has greatly reduced the number of jobs available to women. The step-by-step removal of production lines has resulted in underemployment for workers. Older women who have remained in the manufacturing
sector have to rely on short-term subcontracting work that is very irregular and results in reduced pay. The reason these women stay is due to the relatively higher pay in this sector and the possibility of receiving redundancy payments.
7. Women Workers Situation Today
(a) Wages:
In 1995 women
made up 47.9% of the economically active part of the population. In
the manufacturing sector women made up 42.6% of those employed in
factories. The wages of the industrial women workers in Korea is not only comparatively lower than women employed in other jobs, they are also paid lower than their male counterparts in the same industries. In Korea, it was found that women factory workers usually receive only 56.7% of the salary of men workers. According to the 1989 report,"Research on Gender-Based Wage Disparities"', produced by the Korean
Women's Development Institute, 62.2% of wage disparities between
men and women can be attributed to gender discrimination.
(b) Working Hours:
According to ILO statistics for 1994 women workers in Korea registered the longest working hours in the world. In 1994, men worked 206.7 hours a month and women worked 204.0 hours, but their overtime work hours were 21.7 hours and 26.4 hours respectively. Women workers in manufacturing worked 209.8 hours, the longest in comparison to all other industries. Workers in firms with 10-29 employees worked 297.4 hours, very much over the legally designated work hours.
(c) Restructuring:
According to recent newspapers (mid Jan 1998), there were tens of thousands of workers being dismissed daily in the early days of January day either because of plant closures or from set-dismissals due to industrial restructuring program. The most major causes of these layoffs and dismissals are automation, the withdrawal of foreign capital joint ventures and their transfer abroad to other countries, the temporary suspension and permanent closures of small-to-medium sized firms and the systematization of sub-contracting.
Women workers in Korea are hard hit by this industrial
restructuring policy. As women workers have always concentrated
in thee labour intensive jobs, the jobs lost mostly affect women. For example the recent history of the garment and shoe industries is typical of this process. Between the years of 1987 and 1992, the total number of production workers of the garment industry draped 31.8%, while in the shoe industry between 1991 and 1992 the decrease was 26.2%. The number of shoe industry workers which had been 164,000 at the beginning of 1988 decreased to 31,395 in 1993. Under the IMF agreement the Korean government had pass a new labor law, to facilitate set-dismissal so that company can restructure.
The limited skills women workers have had from their jobs are often non-transferable. Retrenched women workers often cannot find other jobs except working at the bottom of the career ladder in the service industry. As happened in many other countries, women are being gradually pushed into terribly
low-paid insecure employment such as home based work or sub-contracting work for industries and also the service sector. In 1992, women who worked as high ranking officials, specialists or technicians comprised a mere 9.8 % of all working women. A sizable number of women workers are employed in low-skilled jobs concentrated in a small companies. In 1997, women working in firms employing less than five workers comprised 62.7% of all women in the labour force.
(d) Subcontracting:
In Korea, though sub-contracting production has been existed for a long time, it has expanded drastically in the 1980s and 1990s and is becoming the more institutionalized form of production in the garment and electronics industries. In the case of garment work, 5% of
garment manufacturing firms in 1993 were sub-contractors. In Korea sub-contracting workers are mostly married women.
The reasons are their family responsibilities and the vicinity of sub-contracting work to their place of residence. These women workers suffer from lowered wage, irregular hours, have less opportunity to organize and are excluded from all benefits and welfare payments. Multinational companies are also decreasing direct investments in developing countries. Instead, they are contracting local companies in developing countries to produce products under the brand names of the multinational companies. Sub-contracting appears to be a more effective way in evading from pressures to improve the working conditions under which the export goods are produced.
(e) The Masan Free-trade Zone:
The same trends are to be seen in the FTZs. The number of women workers in the Masan FTZ is rapidly decreasing from 28.022 in 1987 to 11,286 in 1994. On the other hand exports have grown 145% from
1987. in the Masan FTZ the number of sub-contracting firms increased from 252 in 1984 to 330 in 1991. Layoffs and dismissals are being used as tools for the suppression of labour unions, and this is especially the case in the FTZ. Most recently, (Han-guk San-bon), a 100% Japanese capital venture, attempted to break a union affiliated with the Democratic Workers Trade Union (Min-ju No-Chong) by indulging in a three month-long organized campaign of violence against workers. This completely dissolved the democratically elected executive council so that to this day six people have been fired and fifteen people have been forced to resign.
(f) Decreasing number of Women in Regular work
Even as the number of women workers has been rising the number of regular workers in general have been iminishing. Today 82.9% of women workers are employed on regular and temporary bases and 17.1% are employed on a daily basis. Consequently, 1 out of 5 women workers in mining and manufacturing industries are employed on a day-to-day basis. In reality, such irregular employment discriminates against women workers because they are not covered
by the conditions of equality in regular employment such as equivalent work hours and equivalent work load. Irregular employment offers 60% of the wages of regular employment, and does not cover entitlement to various holidays and vacations as well as welfare benefits which go with regular employment.
There are rage numbers of temporary workers, the number of total laborforce about 13,000,000(13 million) among them 6,000,000 (6 million) of them are temporary based workers, it's about 45% of the total laborforce. And among the temporary workers women comprise 73.2% and among them about 80% of them married women. It is expected that the number of part-time workers will increase
more with IMF policy. Now a day, for women even has difficult to find a job at part-time based or temporary based work.
(g) Dispatch workers:
Presently with the exception of workers in harbors and docks, law enforcement, janitorial and service sector, temporary worker in illegal under existing laws. Nevertheless, the law is disregarded and since there is no monitoring of these illegal service jobs, there are no statistics. It is estimated that there are some 300,000 workers in 3,000 service enterprises in 1995. ( According to estimates by the Department of Labour, there were 1,363 sites with 27,072 workers in 1991). Presently, service workers are proliferating widely from agriculture and fishing to clerical
fields, and the percentage of women workers in such contingent clerical employment is 75%. Recently a telecommunication company laid off 35 women workers who were working as employees. They were immediately re-employed through a dispatch agency to do the same task which they worked in telecommunication company. Of course they are not now entitled to any benefits. In spite of such conditions, the government, representing the interests of capital, was passed
new legislation legalizing regarding contingent employment(dispatch).
(h) Sudden increase in Home-based workers
According to research on the conditions of home-based workers conducted by the Korean Women's Institute, home-based workers are presumed to comprise 9.4 of active economic participants, but it is difficult to grasp the exact scope of home-based working. We can only see a steady increase of home-based workers consistent with the increase in employment in sub-contracting firms. For the most part, homeworkers are assigned simple and labour-intensive tasks in the labour process, and they are subject to periods of involuntary unemployment. Their job security is very low while their income level is only 68% of other workers. Furthermore, 53.1% of home-based workers are women with children under six years of age.
(j) Gender Discrimination in Job Recruitment, Assignment,Training and Promotion.
Even though the Gender Equality in employment Act went into effect in 1988,it has been widely disregarded and the problem of gender discrimination in the workplace is as grave as ever. At the time of job recruitment, men and women are hired in separate occupational categories, and there is assignment of personnel into positions distinguished by gender, with certain restrictions
based on physical appearances. At the time of stationing
within the firm, given identical educational backgrounds and
qualifications, women are assigned to simple, assistant positions while men are assigned to key work positions. Further opportunities
for education and training sponsored or subsidized by the
employer are more limited for women workers, and there is also gender discrimination in the kinds of education and training offered. Opportunities for promotion are almost always not given to women, and women are restricted from promotion by initial assignment to a prescribed position, and in the case of actual promotion, the terms of the promotion are applied differently for men and women.
(j) New forms of gender discrimination and indirect discrimination.
To circumstance the gender equality in Employment Act, firms are dividing women into composite general positions, placing most women in the general positions where they perform simple tasks, thus leading inevitably to gender discrimination. In this way, firms can legally systematize discrimination based on gender and educational background; this not only places women into menial positions but induces workers to compete with each
other , intensifying labour power.
8. The present state of occupational training for women:
(a) In each of the three types of occupational training centers: state-sponsored, privately-run and corporate-sponsored, the percentage of women participants is low. According to Department of Labour records for 1994,: out of 90 state-sponsored training centers only 46 had in operation programs for training women and women comprised 7% of the trainees. Out of 139 privately-run centers, 91 had programs for women and women comprised 22% of the trainees. Out of 239 corporate-sponsored centers, 176 had programs for women and women comprised 17% of the trainees.
(b) The quality of job training for women is low by occupational category. Considering the transformations of job skills and job categories in Korea, the categories for which most women are being trained are low level jobs such as textile, technological-industry, clerical, machine-related and electronic, traditionally considered to be women's work. Such training is insufficient in terms of the need for specialist occupational skills. In order to ameliorate the structure of gender discrimination in the marketplace, we need occupational teaching and training oriented towards women.
(c) In 1993, only 0.1% of women workers received occupational re-training for a different job while employed in one job - a mere 90 persons!!.
9. Health Issues for Women Workers.
(a) Current laws fall greatly short of ILO standards. For example: Maternity leave covers only 60 days, pregnant women and nursing mothers are asked to work night shifts, and in the case of twins or such multiple births, there is no provision for the extension of the maternity leave period.
(b) In addition, even the current laws on the matter are not followed. The Labour Standard Act contains provisons which make it possible at any time for women to obtain monthly menstrual leave and release from the Labour Executive. However, at the present, the number of Labour Inspectors is insufficient and there are nearly none designated for small-to-medium size establishments so that the law itself is not being duly implemented.
(c) Maternity leave is being under utilized. This reflects the current reality of a dearth of childcare facilities.
(d) The period allowed for breast feeding is up to ILO standards, but since there are no firms with breast feeding facilities, there is no effectiveness to the law.
(e) The government and business interests have been trying to discontinue monthly menstrual leave which has long been understood as a social means protecting women and mothers in Korea. Monthly menstrual leave is a perpetual necessity, especially in compensation for the realities of gender discrimination such as low wages, long work hours, inadequate vacation-holiday breaks and deficient social supports for leading compatible family and work lives. In the case of organized business enterprises, only 20% of such firms presently implement monthly menstrual leave, and it is virtually never implemented in the unorganized firms.
(f) Occupational Disease: Even after the 1987 incident in which an 18 years old female worker committed suicide after suffering partial paralysis from working with organic solvents, there has been no end to cases of groups of women workers poisoned by heavy metals such as mercury. There have been continuous incidents involving ear-related illnesses among Telephone Operators. In July 1995, 23 female workers at LG Electronics at Yong-san developed an occupational disease that have left them with no hopes for normal conception, pregnancy, or ovulation, requiring them to take prescribed hormone treatments for the rest of their lives.
Among these workers, 70% were women in their early twenties. These
workers worked alternating 12 hour shifts, and the company was careless in directing them in the handing of these organic solvents and violated the Industrial Safety and Health law, inflicting fatal psychological and physiological impediments on these women workers.
(g) Statistical Date on Women's Job-related disease.
Statistically, the out break of women's job-related disease appear as merely 2%. The reason is that since marriage and pregnancy-related retirements are still very conventional for women workers. Unless there is a massive out break, incidents involving collective poisoning from toxic chemical substances tend to be covered up. The industrial safety and hygiene act does not apply to firms with less than 5 employees, and in 1995, 85% of occupational accident firms violated the law.
10. Public Welfare Policy:
Social Insurance;
At present, there
are four types of insurance in operation: the national pension, occupational safety and accident insurance, medical insurance and employment insurance.
(a) Since firms with less than five employees are exempt, insurance benefits apply to only 30% of women workers. Especially in the case of employment insurance which has been in operation since July 1995, unemployment pay only applies to firms with more than 30 employees, and employment security and job skills development applies only to firms with more than 70 employees,
so that only around 10% of women workers receive complete insurance benefits.
(b) Irregular employees are exempted.
(c) Occupational safety and accident insurance takes the death or injury of the male head of household as the standard so that there is also gender discrimination in the arena of surviving family members.
(d) Since a subsidy system for child rearing and for company based child-care facilities, including the salary of the caretaker, are supported by the employment insurance, income security during the period of child-care leave is not being implemented.
11. Social Welfare Services.
(a) Nursery Facilities.
In June 1995, there were 269,538 children in nurseries at 8, 129 worksites.(compared to 1994, there has been a 16.5% increase in the numbers of facilities and 23% increase in the numbers of children). The government-estimated average subside for child-care support is only 26% of the actual costs of utilization.There
is no support for private establishments which comprise 50% of all nurseries.
(b) Childcare facilities:.
Some activists have operated study-rooms in low-income neighborhoods. Up until February 1995, the government had operated 1,029 model centers, but at
the present, the government merely acknowledges the necessity for childcare centers and does not have any concrete plans for the expansion of more centers.
(c) In-school Meal Service.
In spite of government plans to put in-school meal service into full-scale operation in elementary schools -(the level of compulsory education in Korea) - by 1997 and in 50% of middle and high schools in fishing and farming villages by 1998, presently in 1995, only 57.4% of elementary schools have meal services in operation and only 38.6% of students receive the benefits of this service. The problem is that since the government's financial support has been so passive, the burden of the costs of building and equipping the in school meal service facilities has been placed on
the parents so that in reality on a nation-wide scale, they are
shouldering from 50% to as high as 90% of these costs. Furthermore, there are not any concrete programs
to set up in school meal services for middle and high schools in the farming villages.
(d) In 1995, women's public welfare budget comprised only 5.3% of the budget of the Department of Health and Welfare, and the expenditure for social welfare was 1% of the Gross Domestic Product(GDP), so that the level of welfare provisions in Korea is 32nd internationally. Consequently, the Korean Women's Organiozations have been pressuring the government, agitating for the welfare budget to be 5% of the GDP, and they are also demanding that every year for the next five years, the welfare budget should be increased by at least 40%.
12. Women Workers Organized Status:
The percentage of organized women workers is 9% only. Although there was a large increase in labor organization due to the opportunities opened up by the mass labour struggles of 1987, it reached a peak in 1989 and has been decreasing since then. Although the total percentage of labour organization in 1994 was 14.5%, the percentage of women's labour organization is much lower at 9%. Meanwhile,
women workers comprise 22% of all organized workers. Exempting hospitals where women union members make up 75% of total membership in other labour unions women members comprise 23-29% of the total membership. The number of women in leadership or executive positions is only 1.9%.
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