[Reporter’s Notebook] A Country Where Local Governments Withhold Wages

"Because subsidies have not been paid out under the Maternal and Newborn Health Care Support Program run by local government, countless postpartum care agencies and workers across the country are now facing a livelihood crisis. While the state talks about countermeasures for low birth rates, it has in reality abandoned the front line of maternal care. This is effectively a violation of labor law and exposes the contradictions of its welfare policy."
This was written by a person identified as A, who says she has worked in the maternal and newborn health care service field for 15 years, in a post submitted to the National Assembly e-Petition System late last year.
This program is not a simple support service. It is the first link in the national welfare system that protects a mother’s recovery after childbirth and safeguards the life of a newborn. Fathers who must leave their newborn and postpartum wife at home to earn a living, and mothers who cannot get help because both sets of parents live far away, are naturally grateful to the state for providing this service.
However, because last year’s budget was exhausted earlier than planned, wage arrears occurred in many local governments. In some regions, support was cut off as early as May, and the total damage is reported to be in the tens of billions of won. Even as local governments were committing the illegal act of withholding wages, they were preoccupied with drafting supplementary budgets for vote-winning, feel-good pledges ahead of this year’s local elections. It is a frustrating situation.
With the central government effectively looking the other way, companies that receive local subsidies and are supposed to pay postpartum caregivers had to plug the shortfall at the end of last year with high-interest personal loans and other borrowing. Institutions that carry out national welfare on the government’s behalf are now sustaining that welfare with debt and interest payments. This is the reality of today’s South Korea.
Last year’s unpaid wages were patched over with this year’s budget. The problem is that because this year’s funds were used to cover last year’s shortfall, there will inevitably be another budget shortage from the second half of this year. With local elections taking place this year, it will also be difficult to push through a supplementary budget in the near term.
Observers argue that the central government must step in proactively to resolve the issue. When complaints about unpaid wages for postpartum caregivers poured in last year, the Ministry of Health and Welfare asked local government to "make active use of supplementary budgets or new-year budget allocations to resolve the problem quickly." However, some local governments, including Sejong Special Self-Governing City, distorted this as guidance that "the Ministry of Health and Welfare has said unpaid wages can be paid the following year" and folded their arms.
President Lee Jae-myung of South Korea recently praised Minister of Employment and Labor Kim Young-hoon after hearing that wage arrears had begun to decline for the first time in three years. He should make sure that the wage arrears at local governments, already foreseen for the end of this year, are not left out of that concern.
honestly82@fnnews.com Reporter