Gwangju Office of Education Announces '2020 Youth Labor Rights Awareness and Survey'

[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Lee Gwan-woo] The Gwangju Metropolitan Office of Education announced the results of the ‘2020 Youth Labor Rights Awareness and Reality Survey’ conducted on the 12th to assess the awareness and actual conditions of youth labor rights and to prepare improvement measures.

This survey, conducted every three years, was carried out from September to December last year, targeting a total of 4,023 people, including 3,289 middle and high school students inside and outside schools and 734 teachers. The previous survey was conducted in 2017.

The survey results showed that while youth labor rights education experience, labor contract writing, rejection of the term “laborer,” and tolerance of inconveniences caused by labor strikes have significantly improved among youth in the Gwangju area, experiences of unfair treatment and human rights violations have increased.

Regarding labor rights awareness, the rejection rate of the term “laborer” was 62.3%, showing improvement compared to 88.6% in 2014 and 74.5% in 2017.

The response rate for tolerating inconveniences caused by labor strikes was significantly improved to 71.3%, compared to 52.1% in 2017.

Experience with labor rights education was confirmed to have greatly improved to 41.1% among youth of all age groups compared to the previous survey.

Regarding the main providers of education such as teachers and external instructors, in 2017, the proportion of teachers (49.6%) was higher than that of external instructors (45.3%), but last year, the proportion of external instructors reversed to 53.8%.

As conditions considered for part-time jobs, wages were important for both inexperienced and experienced youth. 30.7% of inexperienced youth and 42.2% of experienced youth considered wages as the top priority.

The proportion considering working environment and other factors was 39.1% for inexperienced youth and 36.5% for experienced youth.

The rate of labor contract writing increased from 31.1% in 2017 to 47.9% in 2020, while the rate of experiencing unfair treatment and human rights violations increased from 23.9% to 49.8% during the same period. Among these, verbal abuse and insults (28.5%) were the most frequent, followed by receiving wages below the minimum wage and receiving less wages than stipulated in the contract.

Regarding responses to unfair treatment or human rights violations, personal protests and asking for help from acquaintances increased from 12.1% in 2017 to 30.0% in 2020, indicating that youth have become more vocal.

However, cases of reporting to the Ministry of Employment and Labor, police, labor counseling, education office, or labor rights counseling centers accounted for only 10.8%, while 46.9% tolerated the situation or quit their jobs, and 12.3% did nothing due to lack of knowledge on how to respond.

Regarding responses to injuries, 31.0% did not receive compensation, the same as in the previous survey. However, industrial accident insurance processing slightly increased from 10.7% to 16.9%. Separately, cases of quitting without receiving compensation were found to have increased.

In the survey targeting teachers, scores were relatively high for “laborers” (72.6 points), the necessity of labor rights education (81.8 points), the necessity of labor unions (76.6 points), and the need to implement labor rights education within the regular curriculum (78.2%).

Students expressed opinions such as “applying a lower minimum wage than adults” (37.2 points), “experience of labor rights training within the last three years” (35.4%), “experience of labor rights education within three years” (51.0%), and “it is better not to do part-time jobs during school years” (48.8 points).

As a key priority for revitalizing labor rights education, “development of diverse labor rights education content” (40.7%) was the most desired.

An official from the Metropolitan Office of Education said, “Through this survey, we confirmed both positive and negative results of labor rights education policies over the past three years, and we will reflect these in future policy formulation to enhance the effectiveness of labor rights education.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.