earticle

영어

Approximately 213 million individuals or 3.1% of the world's population currently reside in a country other than where they were born. According to ILO statistics, about 40 million persons are working as migrant workers. In addition, ILO estimates that a 50 million are members of a migrant worker's family. This means that one in every forty or fifty persons is a migrant. In case of Korea, there are about 550,000 migrant workers, which occupy 2% of economically active population.
Most of these migrant workers are working under the labor condition of lower wage and longer working hours compared with the domestic workers. This differences cause serious discrimination problems concerning the human rights of migrants connected to the national migrant workers policy.
This article approaches these problems from the human rights' (in employment) point of view. This view point can analyze the human rights of migrants with the aspects below - individual rights, collective rights, social security rights, and rights to migrant worker's family.
This study suggests a few reforms on the legal system affecting migrant workers. First, host state must provide migrant workers with enough information on the jobs they will take charge of. Second, host state has to guarantee the initial period of one working year which is provided for in the law concerned as a basic employment contract term. Third, migrant worker should have the rights to unemployment insurance, which is linked to the period of stable residency. Fourth, to secure migrant workers' right to equal pay for the equal value work, systemic and careful job evaluation should be set up. Fifth, there should be strict restriction on the employers who conduct human rights abuse repeatedly. Sixth, migrant workers in irregular condition have the collective rights to assemble, so that state should get rid of any obstacles to it. Last, careful access is needed when dealing with the accompanying family members who require much more social consideration and support.