Labor ministry takes migrant worker respect campaign to Ansan

The labor ministry and four workers' rights foundations brought their migrant worker respect campaign to Ansan in Gyeonggi Province on Tuesday, the fifth stop this year in an effort to have colleagues address migrant workers by their names rather than by casual nicknames.

About 100 people attended the event, including company and community representatives from Ansan and nearby Siheung, migrant workers, and officials such as the ministry's planning and coordination director, the head of its Gyeonggi regional office, the head of the Ansan labor office, the mayor of Ansan and lawmaker Park Hae-cheol.

As part of the campaign, workers received safety helmets bearing their own names, the labor ministry said.

The campaign is being carried out under a memorandum of understanding on improving migrant workers' labor rights that the ministry signed with the four groups in April: the Public Coexistence and Solidarity Fund, the Financial Industry Public Interest Foundation, the Office and Financial Workers' Ubuntu Foundation and the Jeon Tae-il Foundation.

Ansan follows Ulsan in April, Gwangju in May, Yecheon in North Gyeongsang Province in June and Asan in South Chungcheong Province in August.

At Tuesday's event, Ansan city, the Ansan labor office, the Ansan Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Ansan branch of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions and the Ansan regional branch of the Federation of Korean Trade Unions jointly issued an "Ansan Declaration on Respect for Migrant Workers' Human Rights," committing to treating migrant workers as valued neighbors in the community and to a workplace culture in which people address one another by name.

"Small practices like calling one another by name and looking out for each other's safety will spread to industrial sites across the country, and I will work steadily so that a culture of respect for labor and safety can take root in the field," said Sohn Pil-hoon, director of the ministry's planning and coordination office.

The ministry and the four foundations are pursuing other joint projects to improve migrant workers' rights, including a fork-sharing event and multilingual menus in Ulsan on Sept. 22, and a planned distribution of winter clothing and cold-weather supplies in November.