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G. Young Soo has done everything reasonably well In life. At least in work. At 23, she began working as a office worker in an insurance company and throughout the last three and a half decades, she has gradually climbing in the organization chart, through the positions of a branch director and team leader in several departments. Now, with 59 years, his future is quite black: his salary has been trimming during the last five years until he stayed in the middle of what he charged at 55 and in a few months, when he reached 60, he will have to leave his post.
It is not that Young Soo has angry at its bosses or that has been accommodated after 36 years of loyal service. No. His employment situation is explained simply and plainly by the complex (and controversial) Employment Laws of South Korea based on age.
“Alone on a road with curves”. Young Soo is a pseudonym, but its history is real and reflects the situation in which many South Korean workers are about to turn 60. We know it because it is one of the 34 employees in the country Interviewees By Human Rights Watch (HRW) to know the work overview (and vital) they face. All share several characteristics: they are between 42 and 72, they work in Seoul (some in the public sector, others in private companies) and will have to deal with the country’s labor policies.
Their stories often go along the same lines as G. Young Soo: after years (or even decades) of work their professional/financial/vital perspectives darken as they approach their sixty birthday. Another similar case is that of Young Sook, 59 too and that has been working as a nurse for almost four decades. At 60 he will have to retire, yes or yes, a perspective that causes authentic unease. “I can’t imagine outside this organization”, confesses The woman during her talk with HRW. “It would be like being alone on a road with curves.”
“Punished for aging”. His stories are part of A report of 72 pages in which HRW warns of the serious consequences that Corea’s laws and policies have for the oldest population. The document is so critical that its tone already advances in the same title: “Punished for aging”. It may seem exaggerated, but the analysis indicates that the country’s regulations often end up condemning its elders to a gradual loss of purchasing power, worse quality jobs, low remuneration and undercurred mental health.
“The laws and policies of South Korea to protect older workers from age discrimination actually have the opposite effect,” Bridget Sleap warnsHRW researcher. “They deny older workers the opportunity to continue working on their main jobs, they are paid less and force them to accept precarious jobs and with lower salaries, all simply because of their age. The government should stop punishing workers just to age.” In your report there is an idea that slides several times: “Remove Ageism“
A percentage: 38%. The report of HRW not only exposes specific cases. It also slides some figures and percentages that help to better understand the situation that the elders live in the country. According to the data it manages, in 2023 the relative poverty rate among people of 65 or more years was 38%, The worst result of the countries that make up the OECD. In practice, that means that almost four out of ten elders have 50% (or less) of the national average income, which in 2023 stood at approximately $ 28,200.
HRW quotes another report that reveals that the average monthly salary of 60 or more years were 29% lower than their younger colleagues. The percentage is not too surprising if we take into account two factors. The first is that in the country there is a system that allows to reduce wages in the years before retirement. The second, that 69% of people over 60 who worked in 2023 did it in precarious jobs. If we talk about the South Korean population as a whole, that data does not reach 40%.
A problem with three legs. The big question arriving at this point is … Why are so many older ones attached to that situation? Although there are many factors at stake, there are three keys, three laws or labor policies based on age for HRW. The first is the mandatory retirement age. South Korean legislation is fixed from the age of 60, which means that companies can force a work to retire when they are fulfilled. No need to claim more reasons.
They are the companies those that decide whether or not they set a retirement age, but the measure is widespread. Both in the public sector and among private companies. Especially in organizations of more than 300 employees. According to the South Korean Ministry of Labor, they accept that possibility 95% of companies With that last profile, signatures that usually set forced retirement in the 60 years. Among small businesses it is not so normal.
In the country I already has opened the debate on the need to rethink (and increase) retirement age. In fact, President Lee Jae Myung has committed to approximately 65 years old, but HRW’s study slides that the key is not when the elderly are withdrawn, but how they do it.
The maximum salary rule. The other standard that HRW quotes is the “maximum salary” system, which marks the last years of the elderly in its companies. “It allows employers to reduce workers’ salaries during the three or five years prior to their mandatory retirement,” says the agency, recalling that this practice “causes financial and psychological damage” to those affected, in addition to “based on a discriminatory stereotype.” Without counting on its impact on the quotes, compensation for dismissal or unemployment payments.
And why does that system apply? The initial idea was to reduce the cost of hiring major personnel in a salary system based on antiquity and at the same time favor the creation of youth employment and the productivity of companies. In practice it translates into cases such as Young Soo, the 59 -year -old employee of the insurance company interviewed HMR: when he turned 56 his bosses reduced the salary 20% and since then they have been shortening him 10% year after year. The result is that now, at the gates of the 60s, it charges more or less half (to be accurate 52%) of what they charged when I was 55 years old.
“The Government encourages them”. The problem is the same as with the mandatory retirement age. Companies decide whether or not, but the system is widespread. “Although it is mandatory for companies, the Government encouraged to adopt the maximum salary system. In 2022, 51% of private companies with a mandatory retirement age and more than 300 employees and 21% of those of less than 300 employees had adopted it,” assures HWR. The situation is aggravated by the situation with which there are many older ones when they retire.
And now what? That is the question that is asked not a few South Korean retirees when they are forced to put their things in a box and leave the company in which they have been, five years or decades. And that is The third complaint DE HWR: Labor reintegration policies and “insufficient” social security programs. Those who retire at 60 are entitled only to an unemployment benefit of up to 270 days. And in some cases they are forced to wait for a five years to access the National Old, or “Basic” pension, which is charged once the 65 is fulfilled.
The data is still curious in a country increasingly agedplunged into a serious birth crisis and in which life expectancy has been increasing until it leads to the fact that 20% of the population He has already turned 65. The result?
Sometimes the elderly have no choice but to accept precarious and poorly paid jobs, a panorama that, according to HRW, worsens with the “labor reintegration programs.” “Those who have returned to work are concentrated in poorly paid occupations, such as guards and caregivers, who do not want,” the organism censures, And warn As a culmination: “This occupational segregation by age is a form of discrimination.”
Images | Hunter Leonard (UNSPLASH), Beth Macdonald (UNSPLASH)
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