COVID-19, Labour Rights, and Government and Trade Union Responses: The Case of South Korea

After COVID-19, various working conditions and working environment at work sites which are the premise of labour rights were treated as the agenda for consultation and agreement of labour management, collective bargaining and agreement, and the contents that need to be responded to at the national level were reviewed. In response to many points that COVID-19 has exposed individual workers’ vulnerabilities and inequality, we would like to examine how to systematically compensate for this from the perspective of trade unions. And at this draft for this, it analyses the impact of COVID-19 on a survey of 918 members of six-member unions affiliated to the FKTU in South Korea. And it states that the following practical measures are needed, based on the relational approach: establishment of standards for recognising COVID-19 infectious diseases as occupational diseases and industrial accidents, establishment of standardised safety and health guidelines, strengthening the participation of trade unions in the occupational safety and health management system and labour supervision system, protection of vulnerable working groups and strengthening of labour rights, introduction of statutory paid sick leave and sickness allowance, protection of foreign migrant workers who provide essential work for the lower layers of the labour market, collection and development of COVID-19 data focussing on the labour market and labour relations, monitoring of companies receiving public funds and the establishment of an evaluation system and the involvement of trade unions, the development of various campaigns for the ratification of the ILO Social Security Convention, and a new social contract for occupational safety and health in the COVID-19 situation.