고용안전망 및 고용서비스 관련 법･제도 개선방안

Abstract

Among the employment safety nets, the employment insurance system has been compulsory for dependent wage earners under the Employment Insurance Act, but there are self-employed people who are subject to voluntary coverage. Over the course of the COVID-19 employment crisis, so-called dependent self-employed people such as ‘artists and workers’ and ‘platform workers’ have been gradually promoted as mandatory members of the employment insurance system. These various types of workers often face greater employment risks than regular employees covered by employment insurance, and as a result, establishing appropriate employment protection measures for them has been a major challenge. This has been partially reflected in the law and system, and the Employment Insurance Act, the Act on the Collection of Employment Insurance and Workers’ Compensation Insurance Premium, and the Workers’ Compensation Insurance Act have been amended to partially improve the blind spots. However, the newly introduced definition of ‘worker’ and its targets are applied as a special regulation under the Workers’ Compensation Insurance Act, and it is evaluated as a progressive expansion and application of the ‘special type of worker’ regulation, which has been criticized because the exclusivity and non-substitutability regulations do not reflect the changing labor reality. Nevertheless, the part where the ‘worker’ concept is still applied by industry in the Enforcement Decree of the relevant law is in violation of the constitutional principle of equality and the principle of prohibition of comprehensive delegated legislation, so it needs to be improved. Beyond the practical challenges of imposing and collecting employment and worker’s compensation insurance premiums, the lack of a clear ‘definition’ of the concept and ‘procedural regulations’ for determining relevant persons is an issue. The current method of selecting applicants by industry, which is comprehensively delegated to the Enforcement Decree, has unconstitutional elements, such as the ‘arbitrariness’ of determining applicants and the lack of reasonable reasons to treat worker in covered and non-covered industries differently, which violates the principle of equality. On the other hand, the core content of the “Employment Service Advancement Plan (2023.1.27.),” which the government intends to promote as a national issue in relation to the employment service system, which can be considered a secondary employment safety net, is compressed into two issues: modernization of the public employment service system, establishment of an effective public-private partnership system, and revitalization of private employment services. In this regard, the main contents of the “Job Security Act Amendment (Draft)” pending in the National Assembly are summarized as follows. First, the existing public employment service system aims to change the employment policy paradigm by improving the quality of employment services centered on supply rather than cash support. Second, the government is planning to revitalize employment services through public-private collaboration and expand the private paid employment agency industry. To this end, the government will regulate only the minimum mandatory regulations, such as the obligation to educate private paid employment agencies and related workers and the obligation to report on the status of related platform workers, to enhance employment services through the revitalization of private paid employment agencies and the market. However, this raises some concerns. Currently, the private paid employment agency industry is mostly small, with an average of only 1.5 workers, and the proportion of less than 5 workers is 80%, and it is feared that the marketization of employment services without proper management and supervision measures will lead to an increase in reckless and unsafe employment. In the future, the private paid service industry is expected to expand rapidly as the entry process is further simplified, including easing the registration process for online private employment service agencies. The revitalization of employment services using big data and artificial intelligence (AI) is an important trend. Nevertheless, it is necessary to prepare management measures such as ensuring that the private paid employment agency has a certain scale in terms of assets and number of workers, centering on sectoral expertise, and strengthening regular audits of performance. In addition, the plan to establish an integrated service network for employment and welfare, which the reform plan advocates, is unlikely to be achieved through the partial increase in functional flexibility that the reform plan seeks to promote, given past experiences and mistakes at home and abroad. Most successful cases have shown that the financial, human, and organizational restructuring of employment services, as well as the continuous innovation of the delivery system, especially for customized services from provider- to consumer-centered, is a prerequisite. Moreover, the need to increase the number of employment service counselors, which is less than half in most countries, is a long-standing concern. The “Comprehensive Amendment to the Employment Security Act (Draft)” currently pending in the National Assembly has virtually no measures to effectively manage the proliferation of worker supply businesses, or it is likely to be promoted as a comprehensive delegation measure in future enforcement regulations, so it is necessary to improve it. Ultimately, instead of amending the draft law, we wanted to emphasize the need to enact a “Uniform Act on Labor Intermediary Businesses,” including worker dispatch, services, and employment agencies, to manage the uncontrolled proliferation of labor intermediary businesses and ensure a reasonable supply and demand for labor.