By Hyun Lee

Irregular women workers—part-time and/or short-term contract workers without job security or benefits—are emerging as the new face of organized labor in South Korea. On June 29, ahead of a nationwide strike called by the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) for an increase in the national minimum wage, tens of thousands of contract workers at public schools walked off their jobs. They are mostly women who work as caregivers, cleaners, and cafeteria staff, and they demand regular employment (i.e., full-time with job security and benefits) as well as an increase in wages. Workers in over three thousand public schools—27 percent of public schools nationwide—participated in the walk-out, forcing many schools to cut classes short, according to the South Korean Ministry of Education.

KCTU is known for its militant actions by predominantly male industrial unions like the Korean Metal Workers Union, and it’s rare to see women at the fore of its mass strikes. But women comprise the majority of the South Korean irregular workforce, currently estimated at nearly 9 million and steadily growing due to neoliberal policies aimed at increasing labor flexibility and reducing labor costs. Once overlooked by government institutions as well as organized labor, this growing sector of irregular and largely women workers has become an important force in the country’s economy.

Forty-three percent of all public school employees are irregular workers, according to the National School Irregular Workers Union, which includes cafeteria and administrative staff, librarians, computer room assistants, caregivers, as well as special education teachers and counselors. The union estimates the total number of irregular public school employees at approximately 400,000—including 141,965 education support staff, 153,015 teachers, 27,266 dispatch workers, and 42,033 temporary/substitute teachers.

Sweating for Half the Pay

“I stand next to a hot grill and a boiling pot all day,” wrote an anonymous cafeteria worker on the union’s public bulletin board, which has emerged as an archive of worker testimonies about the job-related hardships they endure. “I become soaked with sweat down to my underwear. We don’t even have time to get a drink of water. I work like crazy so that I can take a short break, but my supervisor thinks I’m resting because I don’t have enough to do. He doesn’t see how hard I hustle just so that I can take a ten-minute break.”

“My one wish is to work in a relaxed atmosphere where I can take a leisurely lunch,” someone else wrote, “They say we work so that we can eat, but in the cafeteria, we eat so that we can work. Heartburn and indigestion from eating too quickly are nothing; they happen all the time.”

“We’re not asking for pity,” wrote another, “What we are saying is give us some relief by reducing the intensity of labor. At least give us half the wages of civil servants. We work more than they do, but our wages aren’t even half of theirs….”

South Korean irregular workers on average are paid 54 percent of what their full-time counterparts make, and public school employees are no exception. Irregular workers are denied the annual salary increases that regular employees receive. Consequently, the wage gap between regular and irregular workers intensifies the longer they have been employed, according to the Education Workers Solidarity Division of the Korean Public Service and Transportation Workers Union (KPTU Ed-sol). In the case of school nutritionists and librarians, the starting salary of irregular workers is 70.5% of that of regular workers, but after ten years of employment, their salary is only 57.1% of that of regular workers, and after twenty years, only 45.6%. Irregular workers in public schools are also denied year-end bonuses, as well as paid holidays and vacations, to which regular workers are entitled.

The workers who led the strike in June say they are fighting for the rights of all working women, but not all women were sympathetic to their cause. National Assemblywoman Lee Eon-ju of the centrist People’s Party referred to the striking women as “mad bitches” in a conversation with a news reporter and said, “They are just middle-aged neighborhood women who make rice. It’s no big thing. Why do they need to be regular workers?” Two striking workers, who confronted Lee at the National Assembly building, accused her of giving a “fake apology after making reckless remarks” and treating them “like dogs and pigs.”

(Video Source: Voice of People)

Lee was forced to issue a public apology the next day, but her comments reflect a widespread belief that is at the root of subpar working conditions for women in South Korea. The patriarchal belief that reproductive labor, such as cooking, cleaning, and caregiving, is undeserving of formal recognition as essential labor undergirds the growing problem of labor flexibility in women-dominated sectors like service and education support. It also explains why South Korea has the biggest gender pay gap of all OECD nations.