Labor ministry launches task force for proposed worker safety net

The labor ministry said Friday it had launched a task force to prepare a body tentatively named the K-Labor Welfare Council, citing gaps in social insurance and worker protections for nonstandard workers.

The kickoff meeting was held at 10 a.m. Friday at Biz Hub Seoul Center. The task force brings together experts in law, labor relations, employment safety nets and tax policy, alongside front-line practitioners who serve nonstandard workers through rights-protection and mutual-aid programs.

The ministry said the proposal responds to gaps for specially contracted workers, platform workers, freelancers and others outside conventional employment relationships, who can be excluded from social insurance, retirement benefits and worker welfare. In a presentation, Park Su-min of the Korea Labor Institute said these workers must absorb income shortfalls caused by illness, leave or unemployment. Park said a system was needed in which careers, income and welfare benefits accumulate with individual workers and remain connected as they move between jobs and platforms.

Kim said he had raised the need for a new social safety-net system for nonstandard workers at a National Fiscal Strategy Meeting in July. "As nonstandard work expands in an era defined by artificial intelligence and the platform economy, it is difficult to close protection gaps simply by widening the framework of existing systems," Kim Young-hoon, minister of employment and labor, said. "We will pursue the Labor Welfare Council as a new public safety-net delivery system centered on retirement mutual aid and encompassing welfare support and rights protection," he added. Kim also said the government would pursue enactment of a Basic Law for Working People.

Through September, the task force will work out the council's functions, organization, governance, retirement mutual-aid design and funding. It will then expand into a forum including labor, business and other stakeholders through the end of the year.