earticle

영어

The main cause of poverty is the lack of income. Among income from various economic activities, income earned from working is the most important. The instability of working activity which results in reduction or cessation of income causes the exacerbation of poverty or makes it difficult to escape poverty. The Korean financial crisis of 1997 worsened job insecurity and generated many working poor. It went worse with the global financial crisis of 2008 which led to unstable employment, low pay, rising unemployment, and chronic unemployment and consequently, more working poor, regardless of regular employment or contingent employment. This study aims to identify the problem of working poor in terms of labor law, examine the challenges of the labor laws to combat poverty and seek alternatives. The first issued of labor law to solve working poverty is an overall application of Labor Standard Act to all of the work place. The second is to restrict of redundancy only to the case of ‘urgent business needs’ in order to prevent abuse of redundancy because redundancy without worker’s reason of imputation makes many social problems such as bankruptcy of working poor. In the third issue, it is suggested that the ‘equal pay for work of equal value’ principle be applied to the Labor Standard Law in order to improve working conditions of contingent employment as well as the ‘responsibility’ element be excluded and judged passively when measure the work of equal value.