Gyeonggi-do Conducts Survey on Rights Protection for 'Ultra-Short Hour Workers'

Targeting 1,000 Ultra-Short-Term Workers Nationwide from April to October

[Asia Economy Reporter Ra Young-cheol] Gyeonggi Province has taken steps to protect the rights of ultra-short-time workers who are in the blind spots of the social safety net.

The province announced on the 20th that it held a kickoff briefing on the 19th for the "'Gyeonggi Region Ultra-Short-Time Worker Survey and Policy Development Project."

Ultra-short-time workers are defined as "workers whose prescribed working hours are less than 15 hours per week," including care teachers, housekeepers, and convenience store part-timers.

Under the current Labor Standards Act, ultra-short-time workers are exempt from mandatory enrollment in the four major social insurances except for industrial accident insurance, and are also excluded from entitlements such as weekly holiday pay, paid leave, and severance pay.

Moreover, even after working for more than two years, they are excluded from conversion to permanent contracts. Some companies exploit these legal and institutional blind spots to increase the utilization of ultra-short-time workers.

According to data from the Statistics Korea Economically Active Population Survey, the number of ultra-short-time workers increased by about 81% over eight years, from 836,000 in 2013 to 1,512,000 in 2021.

This survey will be conducted from this month until October, targeting about 1,000 ultra-short-time workers residing or working in the province.

The province plans to conduct in-depth interviews with about 20 ultra-short-time workers and related experts to analyze the labor processes, labor characteristics, and discrimination status of ultra-short-time workers by industry group, seeking improvement measures.

Based on the survey results, the province aims to discover institutional and policy measures to enhance and protect the rights of ultra-short-time workers and propose policy alternatives suitable for different types of labor, such as care labor, platform labor, and youth labor.

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