For those laborers who carry on their living with the paid wages after providing work, the wages are the most important means of maintaining their family living. Therefore, to the laborers, user’s bankruptcy means the loss of a job and losing a sour...
For those laborers who carry on their living with the paid wages after providing work, the wages are the most important means of maintaining their family living. Therefore, to the laborers, user’s bankruptcy means the loss of a job and losing a source of wages and this eventually means in the future, the workers right to live is threatened.
To guarantee such wage claim of a laborers, a wage claim guarantee system implemented in July of 1998 ensures that when a company goes bankrupt, securing wage claims for the wages of workers, a method of ‘responsibility of solidarity principle’ is applied to the users to pay for the expenses. As such, the wage claim guarantee system is operated by the exaction payment made by all business owners with no legal obligations of a direct payment for wages and the payment guarantee reasons, payment requirements and a range of the guarantee of a wage claims are strictly regulated law.
Also, wage claim guarantee system of Korea provides the priority range of repayment based on Labor Standards Act but charge of such function is on limited basis, but now the connection between the unpaid wages and wage claim guarantee system should be reviewed and have reached the time to expand the social security functions.
To expand such social security functions, connection of unpaid wages policy and wage claim guarantee system must be reinforced, and figuring out the expansion of benefit plans for a vulnerable laborers(small business laborers and construction industry laborers) must be considered, and in addition, such as foreign cases, through a phased increase in the payment limit and a policies should be established to ensure the repayment of unpaid wages.
And, to prevent the increasing illegal supply and demand of unpaid wages support funds, a cause of illegal use of unpaid wages support funds by human attribute of pursuing personal interest and unpaid wages support funds stakeholder’s asymmetry of information, a mixture of inadequate institutional and moral hazard of the stakeholder will combine to occur, so to fundamentally prevent the illegal supply and demand, a person directly involved with the unpaid wages support funds asymmetry information should be solved, and to avoid the temptations of the illegal supply and demand for stakeholder an educational social environment must be created. In addition, the improvement of relevant systems and penalty functions for supply and demand fraud should be reinforced.
When such overall efforts are synthetically made, a political goal of a financial soundness of the funds, social fairness and effectiveness will be achieved, and wages claim guarantee system can significantly be responsible for the payment of overdue wages function and in deed as well as in name, a role and function of social security policy to vulnerable laborers can be fulfilled.