Alternative labor bank fills ‘working mom gap’

Ministry creates temp system to provide maternity cover for public sector workers


Returning from a three-month maternity leave after the birth of her first child, Yun Yeo-jin, 32, is just three weeks back into her job as an official at the public service department of the Ministry of Public Administration and Security.

Unlike her friends working for private companies who felt guilty about offloading their work onto colleagues during maternity leave, Yun didn’t have to feel that way.

The ministry’s newly developed initiative called “alternative human resources bank” helped fill the gap Yun created. The program aims to counter Korea’s low birth rate and support the female workforce by providing immediate substitutes from a pool of alternative human resources for government employees who take maternity or parental leave.

“The best part of this system is that my work burden is not going to my colleagues. I was psychologically and physically relieved,” Yun told The Korea Herald.

Her job involves preparing documents about disciplinary measures for government employees and executing the rulings of the disciplinary committee.

“Since it takes only one or two weeks for the substitute to take over my work, I heard there wasn’t any problem in getting my work done,” she said.

Yun’s experience is uncommon in the Korean corporate world, though.

A 32-year-old female employee, working for one of the nation’s top conglomerates in Seoul, who wanted to be identified only by her surname Kim, said she has had to bear the burden of her senior’s work for the past five months since her senior took extended leave ― two weeks of sick leave before childbirth, three months of maternity leave and another month of paid leave given only to employees who have worked for the company for more than a decade.

“I was really frustrated covering all her work for that long,” Kim said.

The public sector is in a better situation than the private sector when it comes to maternity or parental leave, as welfare policies are more strictly enforced in the government sector.

However, according to some measures, the government sector still has a long way to go.

A 2009 survey, conducted by the Ministry of Public Administration and Security, found that 83 percent of employees working in central government were “negative” about taking maternity or parental leave due to concerns about work overload on coworkers.

Where a female government employee took parental leave, 62 percent of respondents said coworkers had to double their work load and 33 percent said a substitute was hired.

Asked why it was difficult to take parental leave, 35 percent of female government employees said they were worried about others’ work overload due to their absence and 28 percent pointed to not being paid enough to support their family. Another 18 percent said they were worried about readjusting to work after returning from leave and 13 percent were concerned about their career prospects.

To help female workers take maternity or parental leave without any guilt, the ministry mapped out a plan to prepare alternative human resources in April 2010 and signed a memorandum of understanding the following month with major government agencies such as the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family and the Seoul Metropolitan Government to participate in the initiative.

According to the Ministry of Public Administration and Safety, a total of 6,641 government employees took maternity or parental leave in 2009, while the ministry has hired a total of 488 alternative employees since introduction of the program.

Of the 488, 200 were hired to support general administrative works and 288 were assigned to professional work duties.

Ryu Han-na, 28, is working as a temporary contract government employee at the National Archives of Korea’s information service bureau for seven months from Dec. 6, 2010 to July 4.

Ryu said she is paid hourly wages and is not allowed to work more than 40 hours a week, which limits her monthly pay to around 1 million won to 1.5 million won.

She applied for the job through the “Nara Ilteo” (public service job market) website and her work involves dealing with general complaints and offering free legal advice.

“Before I began working, I had thought I could feel a little ‘excluded’ because I would be the substitute,” Ryu said.

“But once I joined them, they were very nice to me and they even celebrated my birthday,” she said, adding that she sometimes works extra hours in the evenings as well.

Ryu said she considered her temporary job as a great fill-in, before she takes a government exam in July which she declined to identify.

Sohn Min-joong, a job market analyst at the Samsung Economic Research Institute, said the government’s attempt at establishing an alternative labor force is worth a try.

“Since it is in its budding stage, the government program seems to be part of their efforts to increase overall female employment in Korea and make the labor market more flexible,” Sohn said.

However, he said there should be more details about how the government will meet seasonally-changing work demands. For example, female police tend to delay maternity leave until after promotion tests because taking maternity leave after promotion will be more beneficial to them, he said.

By Kim Yoon-mi (yoonmi@heraldcorp.com)