With a rapid development in information and communications technology (lCT), we are entering into an era of teleworking which allows us, without commuting to distant workplaces, to work at our home, nearby coffee shops, teleworking center, telecottage, Smart Office, airports, stations, terminals, holiday destinations, inside the cars and other areas wheresoever the equipments for information and communications are furnished. Such teleworking system has brought us an incredible convenience however, there are also adverse effects which could not possibly predicted by us. One of the most typical adverse effects is an intrusion into private information by intruding on privacy rights that is the basic right for individual. Worker"s privacy rights conflicts with employer"s direction and supervision rights on workers and it requires counterplan for protecting it. And for employers, countermeasures for each company or in corporate alliance level or in national level are required in order to prevent data spill from the company. It is likely to be said that the labor-related laws including the current Labor Standards Act of Korea are provided for the purpose of protecting workers at business premises, that is, the persons who live on wages from offering manpower under the employer"s direction and supervision at workplaces. Therefore, it will be difficult to protect teleworkers who are freely working without employer"s direction and supervision at workplaces by labor-related laws including current Labor Standards Act.
Thus, to protect teleworkers, worker"s character of teleworkers must be recognized and it must be classified where the responsibility lies on a great cost burden spent for preparing the places and spaces and furnishing the equipments and facilities for teleworking. Moreover, concept and range of teleworking must be clearly provided for the efficiency in steadily growing teleworking and to protect workers and worker"s character of teleworkers must be recognized through enacting the teleworking system and rational grounds must be provided in order to take the necessary measures for teleworker"s working hours and wage protection. Furthermore, new legislation is required to be introduced to protect teleworker"s privacy, data and information and the systems for safety and health and for accident compensation are required to be established for teleworkers to work in healthy and safe working condition.
However, "Privacy Act", which has been enforced to protect teleworker"s information from September 30, 2011 in Korea, is not practically satisfactory. In that sense, a viable alternative is to enact a new law after performing a comparative analysis by understanding the current situation of teleworkers at home and abroad and to protect the workers who provide their manpower in special working conditions and environments.