• Korean Journal of Labor Studies
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.47-83
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• 2017

The Swedish labor market secures flexibility in the use of labor force by means of non-regular workers such as temporary workers among others instead of regular workers' layoffs. Although the labor law reform in the late 2000s made it easier to use temporary workers and the outbreak of the economic crisis strengthened the power of user firms against labor unions, the size of temporary workers was scaled down. It is the aim of this study to analyze the change in the use of temporary workers, to examine the effect of the labor law reform and that of economic crisis in that regard, and to explain how, over the use of temporary workers, user firms' strategy to secure flexibility and labor unions' strategy to regulate flexibility interact with each other so as to establish a new equilibrium through conflicts and compromises. The labor law reform to enhance the flexibility in the use of temporary workers failed to entail amendments of collective contracts. Besides, out of the economic crisis, user firms adopted a new policy to use third party workers more, refraining from employing temporary workers. That's why the number of temporary workers has declined eventually. User firms prefer to use third party workers because they could avoid their own responsibility as an employer and they could rely on 'permanent temporary' workers without any time limit. Labor unions, however, responded with a strategy to lay more strict regulations on the use of third party workers, so that third party workers could be used only for limited cause for external numerical flexibility. As a result, the managed flexibility thesis comes to prevail to the usage of non-regular workers in general beyond the category of agency workers. Korea with severe abuse of third party workers should learn from Swedish labor unions' strategy to provide third party workers with stronger employment security and higher wages so as to prevent user firms from abusing third party workers.

• Economic Analysis
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.1-29
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• 2019

This paper examines the impact of a dual labor market structure on labor productivity using unbalanced panel data from 29 OECD member countries between 1990 and 2015. By applying a variety of regression models on the panel data (e.g., a pooled regression, a fixed effects model and a GMM), we explore how changes in worker-type composition among temporary, permanent and self-employed workers contribute to productivity growth. While it appears that our results differ slightly, depending on the econometric models, overall an increase in the share of permanent workers leads to a relatively higher increase in productivity growth. On the other hand, it is also seen that the effects of the share of temporary workers on labor productivity are considerably lower than that of permanent and self-employed workers. To sum it up, our findings indicate that an increase in temporary workers could have an adverse effect on labor productivity.

• Journal of Science and Technology Studies
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.29-61
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• 2016

This paper explains the one of the most problematic factor in the society that leads to social inequality - increase in non-regular work. Theoretically, this expansion of non-regular work can be explained by technologies that are designed to save the labor force, especially since corporations in Korea have strategies to replace the regular workers with temporary workers, to save money. OECD also noted that Korea's income inequality is pretty high in ranking when compared with the rest of the OECD members, and says that globalization and technological innovation are the factors of this problem. To refine the argument, this study also looks at relationship between development made in sciences - which can be stated as a proxy variable to look at the advances made in technology - and expansion of temporary work force by using VAR methodology. Based on the results of this analysis in the future temporary/regular workers ratio started with decline, then turn to rise. These temporary/regular workers ratio sustained growth prediction shows that the expansion of the temporary expansion contributes to instability and social inequality in the labor market and technological change are interrelated.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.1-27
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• 2008

This study analyzes the causes of increase in temporary workers observed in the recent Korean labor market. In the analysis of sectors with relatively high ratio of temporary workers, the manufacturing sector tends to hire temporary workers in order to raise profitability, while wholesale & retails and construction sectors tend to employ temporary workers due to the fluctuation of product demand. Another possibility is that with the expansion of college graduates, it is likely that temporary jobs are used as a screening device to reduce the uncertainty of workers quality.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.129-159
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• 2018

The foremost aim of the paper is to evaluate the flexibility and stability of the Korean labor market through a cross-country comparison with OECD countries. Evaluating by the OECD Employment Protection Legislation Index, the flexibility of permanent job layoff in Korea is close to the average of OECD countries. Employment of temporary workers appears to be relatively flexible allowing for effective indicators such as the proportion of temporary workers among paid employees. As regards security, the levels of job security, income security and combination security are all far below the OECD average. A panel data analysis of OECD countries reveals that labor productivity increases as regulations on permanent job layoff become looser and regulations on temporary employment become more rigorous.

• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.15-23
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• 2020

This study aimed to analyze effects of non-regular employment rate and female employment rate on fertility rate in OECD county. We adopted dynamic panel model after classifying OECD county to high and low fertility rate. The results of analysis showed that the higher non regular employment rate, the lower female employment rate, and the lower economy growth rate decrease fertility rate especially in low fertility rate country. While, only the higher house rental decrease in high fertility country. This results indicate that low fertility country including Korea should improve a labor policy such as strengthening employment security and encouraging female employment to increase fertility rate.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.253-283
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• 2001

This paper attempts to account for the recent decline in the share of 'regular employees' among total employees. It finds, among other things, that the decline which began in 1993 is not associated with the changes in the composition of the worker groups that have differing tendency to work as regular employees. Overall, the decline in the share of regular employment is mainly due to the workers' increased transition probability out of 'regular employment', with the exception of the younger workers for whom the decrease in the rate of entry into 'regular employment' has also been an important reason of such a decline.

• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.95-123
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• 2001

One of the most pronounced phenomenon among the changes in the 1990s' Korean labor market is the growth of the share of temporary and daily workers. Yet, it is still not clear exactly how the phenomenon should be interpreted. In order to look into the phenomenon, the paper introduces various definitions of employment status based upon multi-dimensional classification criteria and estimates their sizes using the EAPS Supplemental Survey of August 2000 by the National Statistical Office of Korea. According to the data set, the share of temporary employment by the OECD standards is 17.6% which is higher than most European countries but not far away from them unlike some popular claims. Further, it is shown that the high proportion of temporary and daily workers among the employees, currently above 50%, is possibly due not only to the increased employment instability but also to the widened differentiation among workers in terms of fringe benefits such as the retirement pay and social insurances.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.20 no.7
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• pp.363-371
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• 2019

The purpose of this research is to provide data for the relations between lifestyle, stress and hypertension in a group of construction Temporary employee. The methods taken in this study was to survey the general characteristics and stress in the group, and figure out the relations between lifestyle and hypertension. This study targeted at 301 Temporary employee. in Young-dong for six months (2014~2015). Data analysis used errors and percentages, chi-square tests, one-way ANOVA analysis, independent sample t-test, chi-square test and multivariate logistic regression. The study shows that no relations between age and hypertension, but according to job characteristics, aggravate lifestyle just like smoking(P=0.049), eating habit(P=0.012), physical(p=0.022) & psychological(p=0.011) state there is an effect on hypertension. Based on the results of this study, it is found that temporary workers in small and medium-sized construction companies with high work-related disaster rates need to improve their living habits and physical psychological conditions and manage high blood pressure, as well as research and management of chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes and dyslipidemia.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.103-116
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• 2017

We studied the actual condition of work environment and work morale according to the type of employment of service workers by using the raw data of the Fourth Work Environment Survey (2014) conducted by the Institute of Occupational Safety and Health. In this study, the condition of work environment were composed of work posture, emotional labor, and work autonomy. Also, dimensions related to work morale were composed of competence, job satisfaction, social support, and job stress. In addition, the employment was classified into three types of regular workers, temporary workers, and daily workers. The results showed that temporary and daily workers were more likely to work in a less favorable environment than regular workers, and there was a close correlation between work environment and work morale. Based on this study, it is possible to know about the actual situation and problems of the service workers, and it is hoped that company can search for measures to increase the working environment and work morale of the workers in order to provide better service.