[Editorial] Minimum wage to rise 3.7%: What about small business owners on the brink?

Next year's minimum wage has been set at 10,700 won per hour, up 3.7%, or 380 won, from this year. Last year's increase was 2.9%. As always, the minimum wage, which is decided by public-interest members, leaves both labor and management dissatisfied. This year, in particular, the frustration of self-employed workers and small business owners is greater than ever. On the 15th, the Korea Federation of Micro Enterprises (KFME) said, "We cannot hide our deep regret and sense of emptiness over this decision, which ignored the desperate appeal of 7.9 million small business owners struggling day by day amid record debt and an economic downturn."
In particular, sector-specific application was once again rejected, failing to ease the burden on business owners. Management has called every year for differentiated application in sectors such as lodging and food service, where payment capacity is weak. From the perspective of small business owners, this is a realistic demand. In some industries, the share of workers paid below the minimum wage already exceeds 30%. Even when employers want to pay the legal minimum, they simply do not have the room to do so. In effect, they are forced to violate the law.
It is absurd that a system that fails to keep up with reality ends up producing lawbreakers, yet labor remains inflexible. Labor also claims to stand for fairness, but fairness for whom? Even after repeated calls to reflect conditions on the ground, the annual minimum wage talks merely place the issue on the agenda and push it into the next year without any results. Workers are under pressure too, but the situation for small business owners is even more dire. They say that if the wage rises beyond a certain level, they will have no choice but to cut jobs and stop hiring new workers.
Small business owners and the self-employed play two roles at once. They are employers who create jobs, but they are also people no different from ordinary workers. They must support the livelihoods of low-wage workers while also making a living themselves. In fact, some self-employed people earn less than part-time workers. No one guarantees them a minimum wage of their own. Even so, their voices are not properly reflected year after year.
During this year's minimum wage review, the application of the minimum wage to specially employed and platform workers was also formally added to the agenda. This issue, discussed for the first time this year, will continue to be treated as an official agenda item beyond next year. Moreover, the International Labour Organization (ILO) this year established international employment standards for workers in the platform economy, including ride-hailing, food delivery and e-commerce, for the first time.
With this global trend toward recognition, discussions on minimum wage coverage for specially employed workers may draw more attention. The problem is that as new issues are added as major agenda items, the long-standing question of sector-specific application may drift further from the spotlight. That should not happen.
Minimum wage deliberations must no longer remain trapped in a formalistic framework, turning like a hamster wheel. It should not be repeated every year that the same issues are placed on the agenda, only to end with the same conclusion. The arguments of all stakeholders must be heard in full, and the matter should be reconsidered seriously from the ground up.
The deliberation process of the Minimum Wage Commission itself needs reform. A structure in which public-interest members make the final decision is problematic because it bypasses agreement between labor and management. A task force for effective institutional reform should be established to come up with improvements. If the same practice is repeated next year, public distrust will deepen not only toward labor and management, but also toward the minimum wage system itself.