They agreed that it is important to raise the participation rate of women in the labor market, and to make women workers core laborers in order to guarantee their rights and to obtain full employment equality for women. Therefore women workers would like to introduce a thesis by Jo Soon Kyung (a professor of Ewha Women's University majoring in feminism), about the women labor market in the age of flexibility, in order to introduce the readers to changes in the women labor market and to introduce policies for the guarantee of their rights and full employment equality for women.
Over the last ten years, people working in the women's labor movement have contributed to raising social awareness on the need to guarantee women's rights and full employment equality for women by disclosing and publicly discussing problems such as the protection of motherhood, personnel management policies that can lead to sexual harassment within the workplace, factory shutdown, and more recently the problems involved with temporary and dispatch work.
However the discussions on the flexibility of the labor market which have been steadily spreading since the early '90s, are playing a pivotal role in systematically excluding women workers from the labor market, not only in terms of the operating strategy of the enterprise, but also in the labor policies of the government.
The appropriateness of the discussions on labour market flexibility and the new human power policy.
The new human power policy became an issue in 1993, when the women and labor movements were both making strong objections about the use of dispatch and part time jobs and the new personnel management policy. The new human power policy could be described as a fleible labor market policy.
It means that the enterprise would use strategies of functional flexibility regarding core workers and core jobs to guarantee price competition, and strategies of increasing the flexibility of quantity through using part time workers and the externalization of functions and secondary operations that do not necessarily need to be a part of the internal labor market.
What this two sided flexibility strategy points to is this: that the productivity of secondary operations is irrelevant to the workers' experiences. If the production technology is the same, the working conditions of workers do not affect the productivity of the secondary operations, and women who are mostly engaged in secondary operations have to perform twice the work to maintain a living.
Further most women, in a similar way to the aged and the disabled, cannot be trained to be multi functional and become a part of core labor through education nor can they increase their personnel experience. The following are some problems concerning these new human power policies.
First of all, the model of the new human power policy provides the kind of jobs occupied mainly by women as secondary workers. Because the productivity of these operations has no relation to workers' experience nor years of service, this model claims that it is desirable to externalize secondary operations through dispatch work, subcontract, temporary and part time work.
However it is hard to find actual evidence to prove the claims or its necessity in terms of industrial demands of the new human power policy.
Rather, it can be observed that even in sales jobs which are considered to be easy, and which require no special skills, the productivity of an experienced worker compared to another in an identical situation selling the same products differs by as much as five times.
Also, the model claims that the new human power policy is desired because the structure of the Korean labor force supply is changing to meet the increasing functional and quantity flexibility.
However the reasoning behind the claims that the supply structure will change toward the direction of needing a core labor force, are actually reasons concerning industrial demands. An example of this would be that the demands of the core workforce including middle level technicians and above, will increase within an enterprise by achieving automation.
Excluding the reasons given concerning industrial demands, the population structure is changing and the number of highly educated-unemployed is increasing.
However the change in population structure has no relationship with the labor force supply structure of the new human power policy, and the increasing number of highly educated-unemployed cannot be claimed as a changing factor of the labor force supply structure.
Also, the reason for women and small enterprise workers remaining as secondary workers and for worsening work conditions, is definitely not because the labor force supply structure is changing in a way to increase the quantity of production, but because the government approves and permits observing these classes as an object to be used to raise the quantity flexibility.
After all, they do not move towards a system that favours the expansion of quantity flexibility because the labor force wants it, rather women remain a part of the secondary workforce as a result of the increase in quantity flexibility.
Therefore, concluding that simple and secondary operations do not result in differences in productivity due to a difference in experience is merely groundless ideology. The model of the new human power policy relegates women to secondary operations without any objective reasons.
- The flexibility theory of the labor market - Facts and fiction
The people in Korea who support labor market flexibility claim that increasing labor market flexibility through loosening regulations will raise the hiring rate through increasing employment opportunities, will raise the competitiveness of the enterprise because it can flexibly cope with economic situations, and that such pursuit of labor market flexibility is a current trend.
As a basis for this position, they show the pursuit of flexibility in the labor market through loosening regulations in Japan and other developed capitalist countries. However these claims are not backed up by any actual evidence.
First of all, observing certain European countries which have pursued labor market flexibility shows that their hiring rate did not increase, nor did the unemployment rate decrease due to the partial loosening of the established employment production policies such as policies concerning hiring and dismissals.
However it is reported that everyone agrees on one effect of labor market flexibility; the inferior quality of labor. It can be observed that especially because women who remain in secondary operations in the labor market become the first targets to raise quantity flexibility, women workers generally face problems such as insecure employment, poor working conditions, and the lack of vocational training and prospects.
With these, other problems such as the fragmentation of labor groups and the powerlessness of labor unions are being raised.
Another serious problem due to the flexibility of the labor market is a decrease in productivity. As an example, the committee for the efficiency of the labor market and the quality of the labor force of the U.S. Ministry of Labor voiced their concern about how these labor force usage methods of enterprises could decrease labor productivity and ultimately weaken the U.S's industrial competitiveness.
In relation to their labor market flexibility discussions we need to take note of results of the study that thenations with higher separation rates have a lower productivity rate.
- Women Labor under the new human power policy
What will happen to female workers if the new human power policy based on the labor market flexibility theory is to become established without much resistance? First of all, the general number of women labor working in secondary operations will grow. An equation such as 'women labor = secondary operations' will become established as an ideology, and it will provide an important means to dismiss women from the labor market whenever necessary.
Secondly, the division of labor by gender structure and sex discrimination will be reproduced. With the pursuit of the new human power policy which is based on a gender-divided structure and sex discrimination, it will solidify this structure and reproduce it.
The equation that establishes 'men=core or regular labor force' will accelerate such reproduction of this structure.
Then, how should a new model of the women labor market be different from the new human power policy be formed ? And what would be a concrete counter policy?
- The direction of policy to insure women's rights and full employment equality for women
Until now the women labor movement was focused on working to guarantee the legal rights of women with regular employment.
However the number of these women workers who have legal rights is decreasing every year. To secure these rights and full employment equality for women in such a situation the following should be established:
equality in conditions to provide women's rights in participating in the labor market; and equality in the results of increasing awareness and reducing labor division by gender in the domestic area.
It can be concluded that the pursuit of equal employment of women who come into the labor market will be fully achieved through these established equalities.
- Increasing women's employment opportunities
Compared to nations of similar economic development, Koreans work on average ten more hours per week. Therefore women's employment opportunities should be raised through decreasing legal working hours from 44 to 40 hours a week and reducing yearly working hours by increasing holidays.
Also, to make employment opportunities for women, women's employment ratio in the public sector should be fully expanded and an increased quota employment system implemented.
Further, to prevent the reduction of the manufacturing industry and large scale women's unemployment, policies on Korean enterprise's direct foreign investments and international subcontracts should be reinforced.
- The regularisation of secondary workers
The most pressing issue to prevent the women's labor force from becoming secondary would be to force the current dispatch work to be regularised and to prohibit dispatch work altogether. For the smooth supply and demand of the labor force as desired by the enterprise, it would be more advisable to reinforce current work stability and management under present employment security.
Also, the internal labor market and part time work which shows a nominal, positional tendency should be unified. A plan should be devised to reduce the loss of women from the workforce through means such as the general expansion of childcare facilities in regions and within workspaces, and improvement in social security.
In addition, the spread of vocational training and a women's quota system should be enforced to expand women's employment opportunities, to prevent labor division by gender and to improve the wage level of women.
- The loosening of the division of labor by gender
According to experiences in Europe, the steady reduction of labor division by gender was due to the strong policies of the government such as that in Sweden. Therefore, if the government acknowledges the fact that increasing awareness and breaking down the foundation of gender division structures is the basis for securing rights and equal work for women, it should act accordingly.
First, a policy to encourage men to be hired in women's vocations and vice versa should be arranged, so that it should be more possible for women to move into men's vocations and be available for salary raises and promotions.
Also, the policies concerning the loosening of labor division by gender in families is as important as that in the labor market area.
The actual possibility of the policies
The alternative policies mentioned above have been pursued in western capitalist countries for more than ten years and it is impossible to find any basis for the charges that such policies weaken the enterprise's competitiveness and the nation's economy. Rather enterprises in Germany could steadily grow in competitiveness through higher wages - highly trained-highly skilled and therefore higher wages. The financial burden should be shared between the enterprise and the government.
First, looking forward to joining the OECD, the enterprise should at least raise the non-wage expenses in the labor area to about 35% of the OECD average.
The non-wage expenses in Korea were only 18.3% in 1990. Secondly to encourage women's participation in the labor market, the government should enlarge the financial budget on these policies.
The government should increase employment in public services and take partial charge of expenses concerned with employment security.
In the early sixties, a Swedish economist predicted that the GNP of Sweden would rise at least 25% by letting women participate in the labor market.
However in Korea, women were considered to be the least necessary expense since industrialization. Problems concerning women's employment were understood as a means of strengthening competitiveness.
If the methods suggested above do not seem realistic, considering the stage we are at, the reason for that would be that 'it is not a problem of policy, rather a problem of politics'; a problem of strength.