Are Pregnant Women Bad Quality Products?: Holding a forum regarding the situations of maternity protection and sexual harassment in the service companies employing less than 30 workers

 

Last June, 'Women human right keepers' belonging to the Korean Women Workers Association started to take action. They received training as women human right keepers, and surveyed on maternity leave and sexual harassment against women workers working at very small companies in the service sector employing less than 30 workers, such as childcare centers, academies, clinics and hospitals, and social welfare centers. The survey was carried out for about one month in 12 regions across the nation, including Seoul, Ansan, Bucheon, Incheon, Eui-jung-bu, Koyang city, North Cholla Province, Kwangju, Masan-Changwon, Pusan, and Daegu. Due to our arden efforts, we were able to gain the total number of 2,351 cases from women workers.

 

Two months later, we at the KWWA and KWTU in cooperation with Eun Soo-mi, a Democratic United Party congresswoman, held a forum to let people know the survey results. The forum held in the National Assembly Library, aims at grasping women workers' poor working conditions and taking practical and feasible measures to tackle legal blind spots, through surveying maternity leave and sexual harassment against women workers working at very small companies employing less than 30 workers in the service sector, in which local women workers are mainly concentrated.

 

Eun Soo-mi, congresswoman belonging to the Democratic United Party, who was co-organizer of the forum gave a speech, said "I will do my best in the national assembly to help women workers obtain their maternity leave (easily)," before the main session of the forum started.

 

First of all, Kim Young-ok, senior researcher, Korean Women's Development Institute made a presentation of the survey on maternity leave and sexual harassment against women workers (mainly focusing on small service companies employing less than 30 workers), based on the survey. She revealed that only a half of women were able to use maternity leave and 47.5% had to retire from their jobs without using maternity leave. The reasons why they didn't use it are that the company didn't allow maternity leave (14.3%) and 63.9% already quitted their jobs. This shows women usually retire from their jobs in advance since they worry about having maternity leave and they usually feel difficulties in balancing their jobs and childcaring work. In addition, only 27.7% pregnant women managed to use the embryo-check-up time for themselves, and 72.2% don't have any breast-feeding facilities and never saw any co-workers using breast-feeding time, either. Furthermore, only 15.8% of women workers' spouses took paternity leave. In relation to maternity leave, one out of 4 women answered that the atmosphere is so unfriendly that they couldn't take maternity leave (25.4%). Up to 46.6% women answered that they feel difficulties in taking maternity leave. In brief, the company culture doesn't allow women workers to take maternity leave freely.

 

In terms of sexual harassment, 15.8% of the respondents experienced sexual harassment in the workplace. The offenders are usually company owners (55.6%) but trading companies' staff members or customers also accounted for 30%.

 

At the moment when respondents experienced sexual harassment, 62.2% responded passively because they were so embarrassed that they usually did nothing or speak back nothing. In addition, 41.5% didn't know how to take appropriate action and 23.9% didn't inform because they may get disadvantaged from that. Further, 66.8% of women respondents didn't receive any sexual harassment preventative training, and 50.6% answered they didn't know that sexual harassment preventative education in the workplace is compulsory, which reveals their awareness of the related law is very low.

 

In terms of maternity protection, what the government and local governments should do to protect maternity rights is public relations and awareness improvement activities for recognizing maternity leave and parental leave (32.2%). Additionally, as part of women workers' policy demands, we called for the supports for training, advertisement and consulting (28.8%), and the feasible supports for company owners, demanding labor force management expenses in accordance with employing substitutes. That is to say, we demanded to prepare for related measures, because maternity protection policy need a lot of advertisement, training, and counseling supports.

 

In relation to sexual harassment in the workplace the highest (46.3%) demand was on providing sexual harassment preventative training at the workplace and relief training targeting the company owners; and 20.9% also demanded on the provision of information about the relevant counseling center when sexual harassment would take place. Recently, sexual harassment preventative training is compulsory for only the companies employing more than 10 workers, so the companies employing less than 10 people were put in the blind spot. We demanded to take measures to expand counseling center support systems and sexual harassment preventative training.

 

At last, as of 2010, more than a half of paid women workers (56.7%) worked the companies employing less than 30 workers, and workers who working at the companies employing less than 5 workers reached up to 20.2%. Although a variety of systems such as 90 day maternity leave, 1 year parental leave, embryo medical checkup time and paternal leave are protected, the feasibility is still questioning, especially for women workers who working at very small companies. She underlined that the protection of 90 day maternity leave should be foremost and policies are needed for providing parental leave for women workers working at very small companies. In order to guarantee maternity leave for women workers working at very small companies, the presenter emphasized the necessity for finding out the ways in which local governments as well as the Ministry of Labor can do to protect maternity of local women. Furthermore, the present state of 3P (Prevention, Protection and Punishment) is worrying, so feasible and practical measure should be prepared.

 

After that, Lim Yoon-ok, vice chairperson of the KWWA had a presentation on the reality of the use of women workers' maternity leave, based on in-depth interviews. Women workers confessed that pregnancies were double and/ or triple burdens to them because they had to hide their pregnancies, or leave, and otherwise they continued being bothered. This confirmed that pregnancy would still be equal dismissal in the Korean society. The systems such as embryo medical checkup and applying for the reduction in working hours are rarely possible in Korea.

 

In addition, Lim Yoon-ok made a list about companies' reactions to women's application for parental leave. First, the company usually insisted that they couldn't leave a precedent. The company refused giving a prompt response to make women applicants for parental leave get so tired that they would give up, or made other people think the applicants to be indifferent to going to work. In addition, although parental leave is eligible for irregular workers, too, the company insisted on not giving parental leave to irregular workers but regular workers. Second, the company doesn't allow for parental leave, since it is difficult to find substitute workers during the parental leave. The reason why the company feels difficulty in finding substitutes during the short period is so true and real to the company that the company demands women workers to leave. Third, the company refuses parental leave because of related cost incurred. According to the law, the company has to pay social insurance for the applicants and 1 year severance pay, but the cost is quite heavy to small and medium size companies. Such an additional cost functions as a 'realistic factor in not setting a precedent', which plays an important role in women workers' stopping their jobs or returning to work just after maternity leave. At last, the company demands women workers to write a resignation, saying that the company could give longer maternity leave or provide unemployment payments, as if the company did women a kindness. Women workers are already so tired in the pregnancy period that they could not take pro-active response to the company, because they are sick and tired of the conflicts with the company and there is no suitable person to take care of their babies.

 

In the in-depth interview, another important question was asked. Asked were questions about how well women workers know about maternity rights and how they react to company's unfair treatment. Women workers should recognize the importance of maternity right, and company owners and ordinary people also have to be aware of the necessity and importance of maternity protection system at the common sense level. However, company owners and ordinary citizens as well as women workers, the main party involved, have very low awareness of the law, and so, pubic relations and awareness-raising activities regarding maternity protection system are promptly needed. Furthermore, when women workers are in conflict regarding maternity rights, the counseling center should give adequate counseling and consultation to them and support them. However there is a large lack of the counseling centers in Korea, and so it was raised that countermeasures should be taken.

 

At the last stage, policy suggestions were made to obtain women workers' maternity rights.

 

1) local governments should do awareness-improvement activities to stabilize imperfect maternity rights with a lot of holes through enhancing public relations and training. Presently, women workers' policies have been treated separately by the Ministry of Women and Family Affairs and the Ministry of Labor. The Ministry of Women and Family Affairs are mainly in charge of job training, while the Ministry of Labor are usually responsible for the supervising of maternity right and sexual harassment. However, as shown in the survey, public relations and education and counseling supports should be carried out as gender equality policies, in terms of maternity rights and sexual harassment. Nevertheless, unfortunately, both of the ministries do not include the important tasks, which is the crucial issue. In order to tackle this, the establishment of the 'Job-and-family affairs-balancing social atmosphere creation committee' ’ should be taken into consideration under the jurisdiction of the president. This committee should be in charge of making policies and negotiation, and public relations such as the drawing of social consent to the necessity and importance of balancing women's jobs and family affairs, the monitoring of related policies, and the elimination of blind spots of related policies. In addition, local governments should carry out awareness improvement programs including public relations and education.

 

2) ‘Visiting maternity protection counselor' system should be installed: 65% women are concentrated in very small service industries such as local clinics, childcare centers and academies. When we take this fact into account, we found far more necessity for providing maternity protection system advertisements, training courses and tailored counseling targeting local women workers. For this, the government should introduce 'visiting maternity protection counselor' system which will be responsible for advertising and training women workers, so that women will have far higher awareness of the Maternity Protection Act and related laws.

 

3) The networks for balancing work and family affairs should be formed, apposite to the local level:At the local level, there are a variety of information delivery infrastructures such as Women's Halls, Woman Resources Development Centers, Healthy Family Support Centers, Public Health Centers, and local dong-offices. Of course, there are special purposes for establishing the systems. However, if they advertise even the minimum human rights of women workers regarding parental leave and sexual harassment in the workplace, we believe an increasing number of women will be able to have the minimum awareness of women's labor legal rights, necessary for their jobs. in order to help women to balance their jobs and family affairs, there is the necessity for the installment and regularization of a cooperative system consisting of local labor offices, users' organizations, NGOs and local citizens.

 

4) The government should increase the supports for small and medium companies in terms of substitute manpower problems: The government announced it would increase the size of the recruitment of new employment of level 7 and 9 public officials in order to tackle substitute workforce problems. However, it is difficult for companies to take its own countermeasures without supports from the government. The amount of governmental fund for supporting parental leave should be increased and actualized. We believe that the government should increase parental leave encouragement fund from 2,000,000 won to 4,000,000 won, for small-and-medium size companies. In addition, the government should construct substitute workforce database, and increase substitute workforce recruitment incentives from 2,000,000 won to 4,000,000 won for small-and-medium size companies.

 

5) The government should introduce additional punishment clauses in relation to the firing of women workers who are pregnant and deliver babies, and give incentive systems to companies:

 

According to the present law, the dismissal due to pregnancy and childbirth was banned, and the company should pay fine if not. However, the company usually makes them tired and discourages women workers, threatening them with dismissals on the ground of their pregnancies and childbirths. Companies are not scared of being fined. Accordingly, legal clauses are needed to take strong administrative measures including 'business suspension'.

 

6) The government should provide feasible maternity protection systems for irregular women workers: Since irregular women workers are put into the blind spot in relation to maternity protection system, we need countermeasures. Above all, the government should introduce the proactive comprehensive policies to decrease the size of irregular jobs in which women workers account for 62%. In addition, we suggest that the Post-pregnancy & Child delivery Continual Employment Incentive system should continue being advertised actively, which is designed to ensure the continual employment of irregular women, and that the incentive system should be actualized and increased two times as high as the present amount.

 

Women should not be fired due to their pregnancies and childcare work. Our society should be changed into the happy society in which men and women can balance their jobs and family affairs, through respecting women workers and stopping discrimination against women. The construction of social infrastructure in which far more decent job will be available for women and women's employment will be expanded quantitatively and qualitatively, is an important economic alternative and solution in the Korean society.

 

The presentation strongly hoped that feasible and practical policies would be prepared for the improvement of women workers' states through the 2012 presidential election.

 

Posted by KWWA
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