A worldwide home furnishings company, IKEA, has started to recruit staffs for Gwangmyeong in Gyeonggi province for the end of this year. IKEA announced that it is going to provide a part-time job under 40-hours a week but with the same conditions as a full-time job. There were quite a number of applicants, like housewives with their children, high school graduates, and baby boomers. Compared with temporary work, a part time job is stable and has fewer working hours. Let’s talk about what a part-time job is. -Ed.

A part-time job?
  Many workers have done their work regularly for a long time in Korea. Also, there are many workplaces that have forced workers to do work for a long time and a long duration. Most pregnant workers quit their work due to the situation, except for women workers who are government employees or who work in major companies. Normally, they can’t do both infant care and work. They were called job-discontinued women. Unfair dismissal and youth unemployment were matters at the same time, so the government announced employment rate 70% roadmap to break the stereotype about full-time worker’s labor. Employment rate 70% roadmap is the government’s policy to achieve an employment rate of 70%. Job-discontinued women, young people who want to combine studying with work and unemployed young people are the subjects in the roadmap. They organized the plan that it is going to create 930,000 good workplaces for part-time jobs in order to achieve their goals in the next five years.
  A part-time job worker works usually shorter than a full-time worker in a week. Generally full-time work means 8 hours a day. They are paid in proportion to their working hours. Minimum wage, social insurances and promotions are all equally guaranteed. As a result, a worker has some strengths, like a stable job, the same treatment as regular workers, career recognition and a flexible choice to change working hours. The owner also has some strengths, like employing continually quality talent, raising the efficiency of production and solving the manpower shortage. The government is forcing public enterprises to increase the employment scale now. Also, private enterprises receive financial aid from the government for offering part-time jobs. Therefore, they are also making an effort to encounter a variety of part -time jobs in everyday life.

Effect, response, and result
  Both public enterprises and private enterprises present different results. In CJ or Starbucks, the Re-turn Ship Program is the successful employment of job-discontinued women. However, it is a different concept from the government enforced part-time jobs. For example, Kim Sun-mi, who worked a part-time job in a bank said, “A part-time job of S bank has national pension and four insurances, which is the same as a regular worker. Compared to a regular worker, I have the same amount of work as regular workers, but the wage is less than a regular worker. Owners make their contracts for a year. After hiring them for two years by law, they have to change part-time workers into unlimited contract workers who are employed as stably as regular workers but paid the same as part-time workers, but they don’t like the change to unlimited contract workers.”
  Meanwhile, in a public enterprise, a shift work system for public officials has been in practice since early 2014. ‘Shift work’ is a word that the government is using to replace the word ‘part-time’. This means that the word ‘shift work’ hasn’t been commonly used by people. 200 people were employed as under level 5 public officials through the first half-year. In that same period, shift work public officials were hired. They were able to work in their government department after completing basic education on job competency for 3 weeks. Trial plans for a recruitment test in the second half of the year were announced on http://gosi.kr. The website accepted applications from October 7th to 16th and will announce the final successful applicants on the 27th of March, 2015. No problem seems to have appeared so far. However, there is one thing that has been overlooked. The payment is not enough for the people who are the heads of households. Let’s look over this March’s payments for shift work public officials in Gyeonggi province. If a woman with a family with three members(a spouse and a child) was employed in general administration work(level 9), the basic salary will be 613,800 won. Adding both family allowance and food expenses, total is 743,000 won. If she works 4 hours for 5 days and receives additional pay of 64,970 won, all her payment will be a total 928,770 won per month. This monthly payment is not over 1,000,000 won. It might be enough for a family with three members if both spouses are working. However, let’s not forget these standards are for a family with three members.

What about part-time jobs in foreign countries?
  In Korea, the concept of part-time jobs is still unfamiliar because it was adopted last year. However, in foreign countries, it is already well-established, so the Korean government is trying to establish it as it has been in foreign countries. According to the OECD, 10.2% of Korean are part-time job employees in 2012, but there are many employees doing part-time jobs in other countries, such as the Netherlands(37.8%), the United Kingdom(24.9%), and Japan(20.5%).
  A Dutch person, Sander Breeuwer, who is 24 years old and a university student, said, “In the Netherlands, a work contract from 38 to 40 hours is considered full time. Part-time work usually goes up to 32 hours. A wage depends on multiple factors, just like in any other country. The largest difference between most of Asia and Western countries is that age does not play a substantial part in how much a person would earn. This is due to Confucianism ideologies still being maintained in contemporary Asia. Most high paid work comes from experience, education and past achievements. These jobs are often full-time jobs, with some of them having 32 hour contracts. Since high schoolers and university students don’t possess neither the education nor time to work 32 hours or more, you’ll often see them working in grocery stores, catering or promotion agencies. Due to not having a degree from a university yet, these jobs tend to be relatively low pay. There’s minimum wages which differ for each age up until the age of 23 when you will earn at least adult minimum wage. The minimum hourly wage for an adult is about € 8.60, which is around 11,500. Bear in mind that living expenses in western Europe are generally much higher compared to South Korea, which explains a large portion of the differences in minimum wages.”

What are the part-time jobs’ present problems?
  According to the research in 2014 by the Korea Chamber of Commerce & Industry, small firms answered that they don’t want to adopt part-time jobs. ‘Couldn’t find the right job’(43.7%) was the reason that people mostly chose. After that answer, ‘Decline of continuing business and difficulty with other business’(35.5%) and ‘Lack of know-how, such as improvement of working systems and reengineering jobs’(8.6%) were chosen in order. Therefore, part-time jobs in small firms and public enterprises have to solve a lot of problems that need to be fixed.
  First, the government said that 9,000 part-time jobs will be adopted in public institutions. However, action should be taken for hiring new hands. There are two actions. One is making new part-time jobs from positions of public officials who are going to retire. The other is changing some of regular public officials into part-time. However, after considering that, it is obvious how problematic it is. Because positions of public officials need professionalism, they cannot be changed into part-time jobs. Also, university students may know how fierce the competition is. It is obvious that the existing public officials don’t want to change their existing positions to part-time jobs.
  Second, in both big firms and small firms, it is difficult for part-time workers to maintain their jobs, and unless hourly wages for part-time job employees become higher than regular workers’ hourly wages, people can’t anticipate stable incomes. If people have to do two or three part-time jobs to make a living, then the jobs are just unstable, so part-time job employees won’t have any power or responsibility.
  Lastly, the fields where part-time jobs can be adopted are limited. According to the latest articles, national daycare centers, baristas, and librarians started to adopt part-time jobs restrictively. Part-time jobs have been made in those fields, but in other fields, there are few part-time jobs. Part-time jobs can be adopted in limited fields because the government considers those fields as fields where demands are high and effects are severe. We have to think about matters of part-time jobs and have an eye on the future.
 

By Ko So-young | sy35@cbnu.ac.kr

By Kim Ji-won | jw34@cbnu.ac.kr