[In-Depth Look] Bosses Who Envy Their Workers

From a certain day onward, Seoul's roads have been suffering from the reckless speeding of riders. It has been 10 years since the 30-minute delivery guarantee system of a famous pizza chain, which faced public criticism, disappeared, and the fast delivery by riders who signed subcontracting contracts with platforms is now praised as their competitive edge. The labor exploitation of 10 years ago has transformed into innovation 10 years later, clearly illustrating the current labor reality faced by young people.

Since the 1997 IMF crisis, the labor environment in our society shifted from assuming regular employment as the norm to fully introducing irregular employment. The working class became bifurcated into regular and irregular workers, and within about 10 years after legal amendments, the proportion of irregular workers surged to account for one-third of all workers. These irregular workers lacked the power of organized labor and, due to a lower level of social safety nets compared to advanced countries, had to live unstable lives wandering like Bupyeongcho, unable to secure either employment stability or income stability. Although the Irregular Workers Protection Act was passed in 2007, the method of converting to regular employment only after two years resulted in worse outcomes by reducing employment stability for irregular workers to less than two years. Still, until the 2010s, there remained social solidarity and sympathetic views toward the lives of these irregular workers, and small achievements such as the abolition of the aforementioned famous pizza chain’s 30-minute delivery guarantee system existed.

However, entering the 2010s, a new labor environment structure began to emerge that even erased the minimal solidarity that society’s members had toward workers. Platform companies, which appeared brilliantly under the names of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and innovation, signed subcontracting contracts with riders as corporate business entities to individual business entities, rather than employing them as workers even if irregular. Riders no longer hold the legal status of workers. Those who have become individual business owners receive none of the minimal protections afforded to workers. Mandatory enrollment in the four major insurances such as industrial accident insurance, the 52-hour workweek, annual leave, and severance pay are not guaranteed at all for them. Now that they are individual business owners, deliveries within 30 minutes are packaged as passion akin to working overnight to succeed in their own business.

Those who were workers in reality but are no longer legally recognized as workers are increasing. This new type of business opportunity, wrapped in innovation and passion, is naturally concentrated only on the younger generation rather than the older generation. Compared to the older generation who at least obtained regular or irregular jobs, the younger generation, who have just graduated from university and are looking for jobs, are deprived even of the opportunity to become workers and are forced to become freelancers or individual business owners, i.e., bosses, under a false pretense. And these young people, forced to become bosses, envy workers who are protected by organized labor unions and the minimum four major insurances.

The world has changed rapidly, but if we view it with outdated standards, we cannot accurately grasp reality. Without understanding reality, we cannot create proper policies. Blindly criticizing young people for opposing the regularization of irregular workers or supporting labor flexibility stems from failing to accurately see the labor reality faced by the youth. The elders and middle generations of society pride themselves on making wiser judgments than inexperienced young people based on their life experience. However, they inevitably become insensitive to new changes. The true nature of new changes is most sensitively and accurately perceived by young people. Now is the time not to scold young people as selfish but to listen to the voices of those who are involuntarily forced into becoming bosses. Young people are the most direct parties subjected to the harsh employment environment that no older generation has ever experienced.

Sangsoo Park, Vice President of the Korean Bar Association

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