Under the unstable world economy and the changing industrial structures, more companies tend to avoid the conventional traditional form of employment but adopt the non-traditional form of employment. In the midst of this trend, Korea government has adopted the policy of employment flexibility since the Asian financial crisis and the companies have also strengthened the structural reorganization and the flexible employment system.
But, due to the adoption of flexible employment system, the number of non-regular workers have increased a lot, thus bringing about the social issues such as unstable employment, and discriminatory treatment in terms of wages. So, Korean Government enacted or revised the so-called non-regular workers protection act such as Fixed-term Workers Act, Temporary Agency Workers Act and Labor Relations Commission Act in Nov. 2006.
But, though it has been almost 10 years since the adoption of Fixed-term Worker Act, it does not look like that the purpose of the laws has achieved their goals. Especially, the Fixed-term Workers Act regulates the work relation for fixed-term workers and part-time workers who make up most of the non-regular workers. Though it may look like that the Act has achieved some goals through several revisions, it has not solved the critical problems and has not led the public to reach a public agreement. So, now is the time to closely check the law and improve it.
The latest revision of Fixed-term Workers Act(draft) is based on the ‘Actions for Non-Regular Workers’ released by the Korean Government in Dec. 2014. The most controversial part of that act was the ‘extension of employment period’ which says that if the worker applies for the extension of employment period under a certain condition, the company may extend the period of use of the fixed-term workers from 2 years(current) to 4 years. The priority shall be put on this issue along with the employment restriction method as it is also the critical point in the fixed-term workers.
In addition, we have to check the problems which can happen from the making of the employment agreement on the fixed-term work to the finishing of it, including the revision of the employment agreement and the change in the employment to the work having not the time of termination.
In case of part-time workers, we have to focus on the new type of approach proper for the demand of labor in the changing circumstances and the stable employment. It means that we have to take the total approach to the issue of ‘the possible voluntary conversion to the part-time work system from the regular worker system'' and ‘the conversion from the part-time work to the regular type of work''. In addition, we have to check the issues in the conditions of work which happens in proportion to the working time in the part-time work relation. Furthermore, there are many kinds of laws which regulate the part-time work relation such as Standard Labor Work in addition to the Fixed-Term Workers Act, making it difficult for us to select the law for the cases. So, as there is the demand for enacting a single law regulating the part-time work relation, it is time to consider the enactment of a single law for it.
On the other hand, as for the judgment on the discriminatory treatment against the fixed-term workers and part-time workers, the current law on the fixed-term workers has problems as it has the decision process which is too complicated to use and has the unclear and unprepared provisions. Therefore, it needs to be closely checked, especially on the process of judgement on the discriminatory treatment behavior.
Accordingly, in this study, the focus will be made on the current situation for fixed-term workers and part-time workers, the problems in the forms of labors under current legal system and the problems concerned with discriminatory treatment to find out the method for the protection of workers in terms of improvements and legal processes for law making.
Chapter 1 describes the background and purpose of the study and then suggests the total contents and method for the study to achieve the goals.
Chapter 2 describes the current situation of fixed-term workers and part-time workers, the history of current Fixed-term Workers Act and its legislative proceeding and the main topics in the Fixed-term Workers Act.
Chapter 3 deals with the foreign laws on the fixed-term workers and part-time workers. Here, we will check the conventions and recommendations on fixed-term workers and part-time workers released by International Labor Organization (ILO), and the ‘Instruction on Fixed-term Workers’ and ‘Instruction on Part-time Workers’ disclosed by European Union(EU), which are the international standards. Then, it will check the legal systems of France and Germany which are the main members in EU as well as those of Korea and Japan in order to check the differences among them and find out the implications from it.
Chapter 4 reviews the main controversies and problems in the current laws on the fixed-term workers system and part-time workers system. As for the fixed-term workers, the focus has been made on the employment restriction method and the scope of application in the Fixed-term Workers Act as well as revision of the fixed-term employment agreement and the conversion to the employment agreement having non-fixed term. As for the part-time workers, the focus has been made on the problems in the forms and conditions of labor and the enactment of a single law. As for the discriminatory treatment, the review has been made on the judgment criteria and problems in the discriminatory treatment.
Chapter 5 suggests the realistic improvement method and law-making option for the controversies proposed in Chapter 4 and the problems in current laws. As for the employment stability, it focuses on the method of protecting the rights of workers which have been put on the poor position up to now and how to improve the legal process to correct the problems depending on the uncertainty in employment and the form of labor.
Chapter 6 sums up the results of the study, dealing with the improvement to be made on the problems of fixed-term workers and part-time workers by form of labor and on the judgement of the discriminatory treatment and how to improve the law-making process.
One of the main characteristics of the non-regular workers is that they are in the relatively weaker position than employer. Though the Fixed-term Workers Act was enacted to protect the workers, it was found that the 10 year old Act has its own limitation in terms of the regulations and contents. So, it needs the continuous revision and requires more fundamental changes. I hope that this study is helpful in preparing the improvement in law-making processes for the protection of fixed-term workers and part-time workers.