[Proclamation by Women's Labor Politic Action]

We hope the new president to keep her promises and to be royal to people!

The very basic quality for a national leader is to keep her or his promises. The promises should not be empty pledges for taking the position. In this light, we like to make sure of the women workers' related pledges of Park Keun-hye who claims herself as women's president, and hope to make suggestion of detailed feasible ways, as well. We at the Women's Labor Politic Action (WLPA) will continue monitoring if she will keep her pledges well or not.

1. To cultivate 100,000 women talents until the year of 2017:

- Drastically escalating the ratio of women ministers and women members of governmental committees.

- Introducing the Quota System for Women in Management in the public sector and reflecting the evaluation index.

- Introducing gender quota systems to employ higher number of women professors and women principals.

- Establishing academies for women talents.

-> Unfortunately, the above-mentioned pledges don't show specific percentages. There should be specific percentages and detailed methods in each item by stage.

2. To increase women's employment rates through the implement of proactive employment measures:

- Affirmatively reforming employment measures through the expansion of employment standard for women workers (currently, the employment rate of women workers and managers is to be increased 60% to 70%).

- Benefiting the good companies which practice affirmative employment measures.

- Publicizing the list of the companies which don't observe recommendations of correction.

-> the scope of affirmative employment measures should be expanded. In addition, the penalties as well as the lists of companies who don't follow recommendation of correction should be publicized. Furthermore, types of employment should be included to evaluate the affirmative employment measures.

3. Comprehensive childcare support measures:

- Paid working hour reduction: 2 working hour reduction a day during the 12 week pregnancy and after the 36 week pregnancy.

- Recommending males' one month parental leave after childbirth (100% paid).

- Providing consumer-tailored childcare services.

- Expanding 24 hours childcare services.

- 100% supporting childcare tuition fees for infants between 0 ~2 years old, and increasing home care allowances.

- Increasing supports for children aged 3~5.

- Increasing the number of childcare centers (Newly setting up 50 national or public childcare centers; converting 100 existing centers to national or public childcare centers; and increasing public-inspired childcare centers.

-> There should be more detailed methods to obtain related budgets. It is needed to gain the public nature of childcare as a basic element and to provide phased strategies, as well. The government should also legalize and provide feasible measures for males' one-month parental leave.

4. Comprehensive national supports for women's economic activities:

-> But preventative measures not ex-post facto measures are needed to prevent women's career breaks as a primary policy direction. The government should endeavor to prevent career breaks and help women use women's maternity leave and parental leave very freely in practice.

5. Establishing the employment practice for changing irregular workers to regular ones:

- Practical employment security should be provided for irregular workers who works at full-time and continual bases.

- Irregular workers working at full-time and continual bases should be converted to regular workers from the public sector until the year of 2015.

- Encouraging large companies to convert irregular workers to regular ones.

-> The Act on the Protection of Fixed-term and Part-time Employees should include the restrictions to the reasons for using irregular workers. In the case of large companies, since indirect employment rather than directly-employed irregular employment has continued a trend of increase, tighter regulations are needed. Detailed policies for converting to regular workers are needed. The government should refer to the case of converting Seoul metropolitan irregular workers to regular ones in terms of the conversion of irregular workers to regular ones in the public sector.

6. Protection of in-company outsourced workers:

- Enacting the In-company Outsourced Workers Protection Act to prevent discriminatory treatment against in-company outsourced workers although their jobs are the same typed as or similar to those of regular workers of mother companies.

- Ensuring the employment of in-company outsourced workers in case they maintain the same jobs, although their outsourced company owner is changed when their contracts expire.

- Administrative orders are made to make mother company directly employ outsourced workers, when illegally outsourced companies are confirmed again under special employment investigations targeting the workplaces that the court determines illegal outsourcing company.

-> There is a great possibility that the above stated pledges can provoke irregular employment because the pledges can allow illegal outsourcing. It is needed to encourage regular employment and to reduce the size of in-company outsourced employment. Recently, the workers who had received the recognition of illegal outsourcing in the Hyundai Motors by the court were on strike on the very dangerous steel tower. The government should carry out the special employment investigation into the Hyundai Motors and take an immediate measure for direct employment.

7. Expansion of the application of social insurances to irregular workers:

- The government will 100% support employment insurance and national pension for irregular workers receiving less than 1.3 million Won (as of 2013), in order to expand the application of social insurances.

-> There is a need to expand applicable company sizes. Presently, the application is regulated for the workers working at the very small companies employing less than 10 workers. However, the scope should be expanded to those employing less than 30 workers. In addition, more precise details should be needed including when the measure will be taken.

8. Expansion of industrial insurance and employment insurance for specially hired workers:

- Expanding the social safety nets for specially hired workers through designing industrial insurance and employment insurance tailored to specially hired workers.

- Protecting the working conditions of specially hired workers through making it compulsory to make standard contracts with specially hired workers.

-> It is necessary to take positive look at the right to work for specially hired workers. Expanding industrial insurance and employment insurance to some specially hired workers is just the tip of iceberg. It is needed for the government to take fundamental measures for them to obtain their right to work. 88CC golf caddies and agency private tutors have continued fighting for their rights for 5 years, whose cases should be settled promptly.

9. Protecting workers' basic livelihood through increasing the minimum wage:

- When the minimum wage is determined, economic growth rate and commodity price increase rate should be basically reflected, and the situations of the labor market and income distribution adjustments will also be taken into account. Standard increases in the minimum wage will be prepared after the above mentioned factors are considered.

- Labor investigation will be reinforced in order to completely implement the minimum wage system in the workplace, and punitive compensations will be introduced to the owner who pay less than minimum wages.

-> Minimum wage system affects women workers a lot. It is needed to present how to reflect economic growth rates, commodity increase rates and income distribution adjustments. It is needed to think over how to stabilize workers' real livelihoods.

10. Running all-day care classes at the elementary school:

- Introducing 'All-day care classes' that schools take care of children until 5pm.

- Extending the running of the 'All-day care classes' to 10pm.

- Consolidating the liaison with local children's centers to share the supplies in shortage, and setting up public and secondary school students' additional facilities.

-> The mentioned pledges aims at the implementation of the 'All-day care classes' by stage, but there are no budgets available. It is needed to show in details regarding how to prepare budgets for free after-school programs and all-day care classes. Recently, teachers of after-school care class programs haven't been paid 1,000,000 won as their personnel yet. The government also thinks over how to improve the quality of jobs of after-school care classes teachers.

11. Improving the treatments for care service workers:

- Installing systematic management systems through standardizing types of care services and wage systems, and providing practical standards for care service consumers.

- Establishing basic statistics information systems in terms of service supply & demand and its perspectives, suppliers and employment agencies, number of workers, types of employment, and wages and working hours.

-> The above are said to be associated with the improvement of the treatments for care service workers, but the problem is that there is no specific improvement of the treatments for care service workers. It is needed to present feasible alternatives such as the ensuring of living wages for care service workers and the improvement of working conditions, and how to apply social insurances for them. It is needed to think over how to achieve the public nature of care services. In addition, the Labor Standard Act should be reformed because it excludes household workers from the groups of workers, and the ILO Convention Concerning Decent Work for Domestic Workers should also be ratified, as two crucial tasks.

12. Expanding maternity leaves and parental leaves for women:

- Expanding the using of less-than-one-year parental leave for up to 3rd year of primary schoolers, but presently only the using for pre-primary schoolers (6 year children by Western age) is available.

- Expanding ‘post-pregnancy-and-post-natal continual employment support fund,' 'parental leave grants,' and 'alternative workforce employment grants' for irregular women.

-> Presently maternity leave and parental leave systems are legally well-organized in Korea, but women workers have difficulties using them in practice. In many cases, women workers have to leave the labor market even before their using maternity leaves. Needed is special measures to establish maternity leave and parental leave well in practice. Especially, irregular workers have to leave their jobs at the same time as their pregnancies because their owners to give them an excuse for their contracts to expire. It is needed to maintain job security for pregnant irregular women workers.

Park Keun-hye made a promise for her to work "like a mom who work hard to encourage all of her children not to starve." We hope she can work hard to serve people well to keep her promises, for her five years.

Women's Labor Politic Action

consisting of Korean Women Workers' Association & Korean Women Trade Union