[In-Depth Look] The Day After Labor Disappears

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a street rally organized by the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU). Although there are many discussions related to quarantine measures, when recalling the incident a few years ago where a farmer was killed by a water cannon at a mass rally, one wonders if the freedom of assembly for workers has ever been so well guaranteed. In recent years, the treatment of organized workers has improved dramatically. The 52-hour workweek has been guaranteed, the minimum wage has significantly increased, and although limited to public institutions, the regularization of non-regular workers is also underway. Yet, why has the life of most ordinary people not improved?

It is because most ordinary people are no longer legally classified as workers. Since the revision of labor laws in 1997, more than half of the workers have been reduced to non-regular workers or dispatched workers employed by subcontractors. Until then, whether non-regular or dispatched workers, they were legally considered workers and thus protected by labor laws. The problem began when companies started signing subcontracting contracts directly with workers instead of subcontracting companies. The spread of this new labor structure, already widespread in the broadcasting and transportation industries, has created a special labor class of freelance individual business owners who are essentially workers but legally classified as individual business owners.

Delivery riders, taxi drivers, freelance translators, broadcast writers, and private tutors?these actual workers enter into subcontracting contracts with employers or platform companies rather than employment contracts protected by labor laws. Since subcontracting contracts are agreements between businesses, the parties to these contracts receive no protections such as limits on working hours, minimum wage, or social insurance like workers' compensation. While they are clearly workers, according to the law, they are considered business owners, and as the number of such "worker-capitalists" increases, the labor around us is quietly disappearing.

Additionally, self-employed individuals are legally classified as business owners, but most of them generate income based on their own labor and a few employees. Recently, due to rising real estate rents and minimum wages, many cannot even maintain those few employees and rely on unpaid family labor to make a living. These self-employed individuals, who are practically workers but legally treated as business owners or capitalists, are unable to properly resist unfair contracts imposed by platform companies.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution era is approaching. Platform companies symbolizing the Fourth Industrial Revolution are becoming decacorns beyond unicorns, with news arriving almost daily. However, no one pays attention to where their massive profits originate. While everyone cheers their success, the lives of true workers?who are legally treated as business owners or capitalists despite being workers?are becoming increasingly impoverished. Whether freelance individual business owners or self-employed, if their actual worker status is recognized, it is just that their labor should be protected by law as much as that of organized workers. Yet, no one pays attention to them. The political sphere is busy defending organized workers and platform companies leading the Fourth Industrial Revolution. However, if we continue to ignore the declining lives of actual workers and blindly conform to the Fourth Industrial Revolution era, we will inevitably face a day when legally protected labor completely disappears.

Sangsoo Park, Vice President of the Korean Bar Association

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