Part-time jobs for balancing women's jobs and family matters are just 'illusion': analyses results of counseling cases of Hotline for Equality in 2012

[KWWA's Press release in celebration of International Women's Day]

Part-time jobs for balancing women's jobs and family matters are just 'illusion': analyses results of counseling cases of Hotline for Equality in 2012

The government claims that the expansion of part-time jobs is caused by married women who want to balance their jobs and family matters. But, in reality, unmarried women at their ages of less than 30 are found to work on the part-time base. This shows the government's insistence is just fake illusion.  

[partime workers account for 62.9% of those aged less than 30, 64.7% are unmarried]

In celebration of International Women's Day, Korean Women Workers' Association (KWWA) analyzed the counseling cases of its Hotline for Equality in 2012 and found the following outcomes. 35.5% of the counselees who work on the part-time base are aged 20~24, 18.5% aged 25~29 and 8.9% aged less than 20, which shows those aged less than 30 are concentrated on part-time jobs. Furthermore, 64.7% of them are unmarried women workers.  

Counseling cases regarding part-time workers show their poorer situations than any other forms of jobs. Delayed payment of wages, a typical case occurring at the poorest workplaces accounts for up to 51.4%. Additionally, the counselees who have worked for less than 1 year compose 88.1% ~ 90%, and those having worked for over 3 years account for only 0.5% (3 cases). This means part-time jobs are very short-term based.  

According to the 2012 March statistics, women accounted for 73% of part-time workers totaling up 1.7 million persons. Whereas 50.6% of irregular workers chose their jobs of their free wills, only 45.6% of part-timers had their jobs of their free wills. Moreover, the average tenure of office of part-time workers is very short. They work for 1 year and 4 months on average, while regular workers had the average tenure of office for 6 years and 9 months, and irregular workers for 2 years and 5 months. What is worse is that their wages are 621,000 Won, which is the lowest by type of employment. Their welfare benefits are also the worst. Only 11.2% receive retirement grants, 14.9% bonuses, 6.6% overtime payments, and 6.3% paid leave. They also confront another problem in relation to social insurance coverage. Only 13.2% are covered by the national pension, 15.4% health insurance, 15.9% employment insurance, which shows they are not in the social security net.  

To address part-time workers' issues, we at the KWWA plan to launch research on part-time women workers in this year. The new government must stop the expansion of part-time jobs right away and take prompt measures through comprehensive surveys on part-time jobs.

[Women workers are re-employed as indirect workers after their career breaks]

Age distribution of the counselees of the Hotline for Equality by type of employment is as follows: those aged 30~34 amongst regular workers accounted for 36.2%, which is the top amongst regular workers, and those aged 20~24 amongst part-timers accounted for 35.5%, which is the highest amongst part-time workers. Those aged 40~49 accounted for 30.2% out of dispatched workers and those aged over 50 accounted for 71.2% amongst outsourced workers. 27.6% of contracted workers are at their age ranges of 30~34, and 45.5% of day workers at their age over 50.

Korean women's life cycle employment graph looks like M due to women's career breaks caused by their pregnancies and child births. From this graph we can assume that women usually enter the labor market as indirect workers whose working conditions are very poor, when there are re-employed after their career breaks.

Since the Act on the Protection of Fixed-term and Part-time Employees was enacted, there has been a decrease in the number of fixed workers and increases in the types of direct employment and part-time jobs, according to a research. In addition, the government needs to investigate the existence of a far higher number of directly employed workers because directly employed irregular jobs are converted to indirectly employed ones, which is designed to evade from the job improvement to regular ones in the public sector.

[Most of sexual harassment attackers at very small companies are 'owners']

Besides, the issue of sexual harassment at very small companies was found to be very serious. Whereas the sexual harassment by owners are 32.6% overall, the attackers of sexual harassment are owners at 66.7% of very small companies employing less than 4 people. As shown in the Seosan Pizza house case, preventative education against sexual harassment in the workplace is not compulsory at very small companies employing less than 10 people. At very small companies, owners should treat sexual harassment cases, penalize attackers, and protect victims, but most of them are attackers themselves, which is very problematic. Therefore, relevant acts should be reformed to protect victims.

By the way, the total number of counseling cases in 2012 by the Hotline for Equality (having 9 local offices in Seoul, Incheon, Pucheon, Ansan, Suwon, North Jeolla, Kwangju, Masan & Changwon, and Pusan) were 2,752 cases (including males, but re-counseling cases are excluded). Among them, 2,569 cases were done by women, and 183 cases by males.

By counseling content types in 2012, working condition related cases account for 41.1% (1,055 cases), maternity right counseling cases for 38.5% (990 cases), which are the two largest components. sexual harassment was the third largest counseling cases (354 cases), followed by gender discriminatory remarks and behaviors. Compared to 2011, the counseling cases concerning sexual harassment at the workplace increased a lot, and it increased two times higher than those in 2002.