Migrant Watch

S. Korea Migrant Workers Score New Labor Policy

A group of migrant workers in South Korea has launched a campaign to protest South Korea’s new labor scheme to monitor and limit the length of stay of migrant workers in the country.

BY BULATLAT.COM

The Equality Trade Union–Migrants Branch (ETU-MB), a part of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), is protesting the Employee Permit System (EPS), which the South Korean government is set to implement.

Under the EPS, a migrant worker is limited only to three-year contract in South Korea and not allowed to change his employer. The labor group also said that provisions in the EPS do not allow the worker to strike and negotiate for better working conditions and higher wage which, it said, is tantamount to labor repression.

The EPS will reportedly only apply to new workers entering South Korea after its implementation. This will make the close to 300,000 migrant workers currently in the country illegal.

“Modern slavery”

According to ETU-MB, up to two-thirds of all foreign workers in South Korea are undocumented. The EPS will make them even more vulnerable to persecution and abuse through the threat of deportation.

It also noted, “The costs incurred by the migrants to get to Korea are exorbitant: workers commonly borrow money from families, friends, and neighbors to pay for their passage to Korea. Typically, this can be up to US$10,000 and a worker may have to work for three years to pay back the loan.”

At present, migrant workers in South Korea are under the “Industrial Trainee System” (ITS). According to ETU-MB however, this is “nothing but a thinly veiled scheme that allows migrants to be imported en-masse and forced to work for drastically substandard wages in poor conditions.”

“It is modern slavery,” the group said. 

Source of the problem

Migrant workers provide labor for the medium and small enterprises in South Korea.

“These migrants are forced to work abroad because of the worsening economic situation in their own homeland and to cope with the basic needs of their family. While in (South) Korea, they contribute in the economy through the availability of their cheap labor services in the 3Ds (Dirty, Difficult and Dangerous jobs) while at the same time contribute as active consumers in Korean society who purchase goods and avail of the services of banks, restaurants, stores, and so on,” said ETU-MB in a declaration.

“But this contribution remains unrecognized and instead their rights are continuously suppressed.”

ETU-MB traces the problem to the policies prescribed by the International Monetary-Fund and World Bank and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and World Trade Organization which “perpetrate economic downturn, job insecurities, low wages and decline in social benefits and aggravates poverty.” These policies are reportedly reflected in labor restructuring in many countries like South Korea that affects both local and migrant workers.

Many of the people are also forced to leave their country of origin to find better opportunities elsewhere. Outside their places of origin, they become migrants, immigrants, undocumented workers, refugees and displaced people.  Bulatlat.com

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