Average monthly wage of 527,000 won… Guaranteeing minimum wage does not hurt businesses, including subsidies
South Korea has had a mandatory employment system for people with disabilities since 1991. The employment rate of people with disabilities in national and local governments and businesses with 50 or more full-time workers has increased from 0.79 percent in 2001 to 3.12 percent in 2022. However, there is still a long way to go. Only 64,115 businesses employed people with disabilities, or 3.4% of the total 1,948,666 businesses. By the end of 2022, there will be 210,000 workers with disabilities, or 1.41% of all workers. This is one-quarter of the proportion of people with disabilities in the total population (5.2%).
As of 2023, the mandatory employment rate for people with disabilities is 3.6% for national, local, and public organizations and 3.1% for private companies. Companies that do not meet the mandatory employment rate will have to pay a levy. While the emphasis on corporate social responsibility is slowly improving, the practice of choosing to pay the levy rather than hire people with disabilities is still strong, especially among larger organizations. In 2022, 8534 businesses collected an estimated KRW 858.6 billion in employment levies, with 59.4% of the levies paid by businesses with 1,000 or more employees, just 14.6% of the total.
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“It is meaningful that people with disabilities are employed and can work and spend time, but the wages of people with disabilities who work in sheltered workshops are virtually priceless,” said Cho Hyun-jung, director of the One Step Mind Counseling Center. “The minimum wage system does not prevent people with disabilities from being hired, but the prejudice against people with disabilities is much greater.” “There are many people who are capable of working but are unable to do so because of the stigma of being disabled,” Cho said. “We need to look at them as people who are not disabled and accept their disabilities as individual differences and characteristics of the person.”
*Please note this is a Korean article
Source: 주간경향
