The purpose of this study is to show that home-study teachers of home-study materials company are recognized as workers under the Labor Standards Act. This study analyzes the court's written judgements on the recognition of their rights as workers and...
The purpose of this study is to show that home-study teachers of home-study materials company are recognized as workers under the Labor Standards Act. This study analyzes the court's written judgements on the recognition of their rights as workers and reinterprets them based on the legal requirements to judge whether they are workers or not from the perspective of field experiences.
Main research methods are participant observation and in-depth interview. For the research, I participated in the field as a home-study teacher for three months and conducted in-depth interviews with labor union members and a manager of home-study materials company.
In this study, I have shown that home-study teachers are workers. In the 1980s, their employment status was permanent position but it has changed because of flexibilization of labor market. Home-study teachers' employment status is defined as special types of employment. Their job description is the same now as then. But their rights as workers are not guaranteed by the law. Home-study teachers are still appealing against this ruling. Meanwhile, the rulings of the superior court and administrative court are different in spite of the same legal requirements. These judgements are interpreted differently depending on the subjects who judge. Especially, there was a big difference between two judgements in terms of 'job performance contents and method' and 'remuneration nature and contents'. These two elements are very important to judge whether they are workers or not legally. For this reason, participant observation and work process analysis was conducted focusing on these two criteria.
The research results show that home-study teachers are workers qualified to be protected by the law for the following reasons. First, the job description of home-study teacher is defined by the employer and job is performed according to the manual. They do not have autonomy. Second, their work is carried out at a given time and place under the instructions of employer. They do not have a right to choose time or place but controlled by customer's schedule. Third, they are under the employer's command on the objective and decision of the assigned task. They do not operate their business independently. They need approval from a team manager before making a decision. Fourth, although there was no basic pay, they are remunerated for their work. And finally, more than seventy percent of home-study teachers work longer than three years. Thus, they should be recognized as permanent workers not temporary or contract employees.
Some existing researches argue that the legal requirements to judge whether someone is a worker or not has a limit in that it does not consider flexibilization of labor market and the diversity of business type. Thus, they conclude that the legal requirements need to be more inclusive and become more flexible in the interpretation by the courts. However, this study proved that home-study teachers are fully qualified as workers even under the current legal requirements. They are still workers but experienced legal change in employment status because of flexibilization of labor market and because it is pink-collar job.
In the near future, it is expected that workers in special types of employment will be universal workers. We need to pay more attention to pink-collar jobs, especially workers in special types of employment in order that women's work value can be evaluated in a right way in the labor market.