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Follow-up to the Non-Regular Work Law and RelatedKey Programs in 2008
 
Chung, Hyung-Woo
 
Director of the Non-Regular Workers Policy Division,Ministry of Labor 
 
1. Introduction
 The law on non-regular work, which took effect on July 1st, 2007, hasbeen in place for about 8 months. It was not that the law gained fullsupport from all interested parties from the beginning: especiallywhen a large company contracted out the work which had beenperformed by its employees until then, simply to evade its obligationunder the new law to narrow the gap between regular and non-regularemployees, the resulting labor dispute came to light in the media,
 
causing misunderstandings and distrust of the law's purposes.However, since its enaction, approximately 68,000 non-regularworkers in public sector have become regular workers, and about27,000 non-regular workers in private sector, notably including banks,hospitals and distributors, have obtained a job under an indefinite-term contract or become regular workers, all with better workingconditions. With regard to the arrangements of discriminationremedies, the applications for such remedies have been made by theworkers of influential sectors such as railway service and part-timelecturers and, in some cases, the applicants were found to have beendiscriminated in employment. Consequently, the merit of thediscrimination remedies system is attracting more attention. To sumup, the non-regular work law, despite its short history, has not onlysucceeded in gaining people's understanding about the need toresolve discrimination against and abuse of non-regular workers, butis also functioning as a minimum legal framework to address thegrowing gap in the labor market.
2. Key problems raised in relation to the enforcement of thelaw
 
 
It is true, however, that employers and workers make differentevaluations about the law, understandably as they are in differentpositions. Thanks to the intensive efforts to inform employers,workers and the general public of the non-regular work law anddisseminate the example cases of discrimination remedies, a growingnumber of people have accepted the need to address discriminationagainst non-regular workers. Still, the labor community is opposed tothe law, arguing that the discrimination remedies system is noteffective enough as it does not cover in-company subcontracted workand entitles only individual workers to apply for discriminationremedies. On the other hand, the business community complains thatthe requirements under the system increase employers' financialburden.Moreover, the labor community insists that, given the several caseswhere employers use in-company subcontracted work simply tobypass their requirements under the discrimination remedies system,effective measures should be undertaken to prevent those practices.On the contrary, the business community resists the notion of restraining the use of in-company subcontracted work, reasoning thatsuch restraint would make the labor market too rigid.
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