Global Courant 2023-05-10 18:55:00
SEOUL – The government plans to allow Southeast Asian domestic workers to work in Seoul as early as this year, but the pilot project does not include previously proposed provisions that would allow employers to pay them below the minimum wage.
In an effort to raise the country’s historically low birth rate, Seoul City and the Department of Employment and Labor are reviewing a pilot project to bring domestic helpers from countries like the Philippines to help families with childcare and housework.
“In the first half of this year, we will prepare detailed plans on how to implement the foreign domestic workers system, including when (it will start) and how many workers will be involved (in the pilot project),” said a government official. ministry. said.
The government plans to issue E-9 visas for the workers by adding domestic help to the list of allowed fields under the work permit system. The workers can then be hired by families in South Korea through certified service providers as early as this fall.
If South Korea’s minimum wage of 9,620 won (S$9.66) per hour is applied, the hourly wage of foreign domestic workers would be more than 30 percent lower than that of existing domestic workers in South Korea. The average hourly wage for local domestic workers is about 13,000 won for Chinese nationals of Korean descent and over 15,000 won for Koreans.
Foreign domestic helpers are also likely to commute rather than work as live-in helpers.
Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon has repeatedly called for foreign housekeepers to be allowed to work here to help increase birth rates and prevent women from leaving the workforce mid-career, citing how they are effective been to Singapore and Hong Kong.
He wrote on Facebook late last month that he agrees with Nobel laureate and economist Michael Kremer who said South Korea needs an immigration policy, citing Hong Kong and Singapore as examples that have successfully implemented large-scale special visa programs for foreign domestic workers.
“It is now time for our society to build a more cohesive system so that people can work and raise children at the same time. … There are voices against the (foreign housekeeper) system, but there is no right and wrong in the system, we just have to take advantage of the benefits it offers,” he wrote.
A revised bill was introduced in March to exempt foreign domestic workers from the minimum wage law, but was strongly criticized for being discriminatory.
There are already Southeast Asians working unofficially as domestic helpers in South Korea, and some believe that being able to work legally by applying the minimum wage could lead to more choice for parents with young children.
Others are concerned that the introduction of foreign domestic workers would cause local domestic helpers to lose their jobs, and that a monthly wage of 2 million won including holiday pay for commuter helpers is too high to make a meaningful change in declining birth rates. THE KOREA HERALD/ASIA NEWS NETWORK
