To the youth:

  you are not free

  1. Passion Pay: employers think that they can buy young employees’ manpower without reasonable compensation because they provide opportunities for business experience.

  2. Win-Win Pay: employers and employees exchange reasonable compensation at work.

  3. Work Experience: work experience for young workers such as internships, part-time jobs, temporary work, extramural activities etc.

  4. Employer: It provides work opportunities to the young.

  5. Employee: 19~34 age of worker.

   Capitalism, moralism, and “passion pay”

  In today’s society, capitalism and moralism coexist. What is capitalism? It is an ideology or system of government in which men may act in the pursuit of capital. The idea of capitalism form atmosphere that money is regarded as a standard of social success. And moralism pursuit the morality such as credit, trust, faithfulness. This two concepts are complement. Credit and faithfulness helps earn and maintain capital. For example, when merchant keep his promise with consumer, he gain the trust and it helps his business.

  If one or a few firms do not follow the market rules, some greedy firms will dominate the market through monopoly or oligopoly. Powerful sellers will be able to exert significant power over prices and other society member causing them to be subordinate to them. Then, the market and society start to lose vitality and will eventually collapse. So capitalism and moralism are in conflict between values, but both are coexistent and influence on our society.

  Like most other countries, capitalism and moralism are coexistent in Korea. However, their values are in conflict so they cause social problems. This may be inevitable. People realize this problem throughframes, andframing needs new words. Making a new word helps society members to realize the problem. ‘Passion Pay’ is a term made by society members, so they can recognize the conflicts between capitalism and moralism. The important thing is peoplefind a way tolive in coexistencewith capitalism and moralism.

   Research on the actual conditionsof passion pay

  ‘A President Youth Committee’ conducted research about the conditions of so-called passion pay. The study tracked 5,219 people aged 19 to 34 years who had work experience in Korea. According to the research, 53.6% of young employees experienced ‘passion pay’, which was unfair treatment to them. <Type:intern 40%, extramural activity 38.2%, on job trainee 35.8% and freelancer 34.0%> More than half of the young workers experienced passion pay. It is a high percent, so it is a big social problem in Korea.

  Passion pay has various types, with three cases being the most common. First, not paying for employees’ work. When the employees provide substantial work performance, they need to get a proper salary. A total of 57.5% of young workers experienced passion pay. Although they provided substantial performance to the same degree as permanent employees, only 25.2% of them were paid properly. Another 42.6% of them were paid less than minimum wage, and 32.2% of them were not paid at all. The second is the failure to keep the contract they agreed upon before work. Among those polled, 42.2% of them said that working contracts were not kept. <Type: do not change a temporary position to a permanent position: 42.2%, not give more point when recruitment 51.6%, do not take into consideration diplomas and references 28.2%>The last type of passion pay is unreasonable discrimination. According to the results, 37.4% of them experienced unreasonable discrimination because they were just in temporary positions.

  Then, what do young workers think about passion pay? The most difficult thing for them when they experienced passion pay is the low wage (27%) and the feeling they learned nothing valuable at work (18.7%). However, 41.1% of young workers think the ‘while passion pay is unreasonable, it’s an inevitable part of social life.” What’s more, 16.0% of them think of quitting work’. This is an actual condition of young workers; they know what is wrong, but have no suitable measure so just endure or quit.

   What happens in Korea?

  Lots of young Korean workers labor in poor working situations. So we need to know more about the reality of working places. When we realize the actual situation, we can find solutions more easily.

  One specialized third year industrial high school student had a cerebral hemorrhage at Kia Motors Corporation, Gwangju(2011). He had worked at Kia for four months performing 58hours a week. According to labor standards laws, a minor can work only 46hours in a week. He was even on a duty nights and weekends. As a result, he was in a brain death.

   The Youth Union did research on the actual conditions of 198 hair salons and published the results (2013).They found that 60%of the staff were found to receive minimum wages (at that time, 4,860 won) because they were considered trainees, not employees. They worked an average of 64.9 hours a week and they received an average of 93,000 won a month. They were treated as staff for three years. All the expense of treatment is for staff such as skin injury and varicose veins occurred because of their jobs.

  One intern committed suicide while working at Dongbu Life Insurance Do., Ltd(2013). ‘Choe’ who had an internship connected with a permanent position committed suicide because of stress. He made about 1,000,000 won a month; a bonus based on performance the same as a permanent employee. However, he had to do more tasks. This internship system usually takes at least two years before workers are converted to permanent employees.

   The Embassy of the Republic of Korea in the United States of America had a help-wanted advertisement for an internship (2013).It has difficult conditions (applicants have to have an excellent command of English and Korean) to apply and workers had to do practical work (interpretation, translation, and administrative work), but they were not paid anything even for transportation and lodging expenses.

   Learning about other countries’ laws

  The USA is the first country to introduce internships. They adopted an education and training internship model which was first used by private enterprise. The USA announced six standards for unpaid internships through precedent by the Supreme Court and the notifications of the Ministry of Labor. If they do not fulfill these six conditions, they will be held accountable under labor laws. (All or Nothing)

  1. Internships should be the same as the training in an educational environment even if the work is of practical use to the employing facility.

  2. The internship experience is for intern’s benefit.

  3. An intern’s work should be done with close supervision, and should not displace a regular worker’s work.

  4. The employer should not get direct benefit from an intern’s work.

  5. When the internship is finished, the intern has the freedom to quit the job.

  6. An employer and employee should perfectly understand whether this work is paid or not.

  France has two models of internships. Public institutions and private institutions cooperate to offer jobs to the young generation and private institutions afford the chance of work. France has laws for protecting interns. The points of this law are as follows:

  1. The maximum duration for an internship is six months: it gives shape to enforcement ordinances about the use of interns.

  2. Increased pay: an intern working longer than two months earns a salary that is more than 15% of minimum wage. The set rate of increase is 523.26 Euro (2014).

  3. Restrictions on internships: a company’s number of interns has restrictions because the government is worried about internship abuse.

  4. Strict supervision: the government strictly supervises the use of interns. If a company breaks the law, they pay 2,000 Euro per head of intern. In addition, if it commits violations repeatedly, the penalty can be more severe.

  5. Companies should make a list of interns on the wage ledger.

  6. Employers have a responsibility when an industrial accident occurs: when an intern has an industrial accident, the company has the responsibility and the school, which dispatched the student, avoid the responsibility.

   We are valuable people

  Employees always want more profits so they grudge expense of wage. Proper treatments improve an employee’s satisfaction, producing more productivity as a result. Moreover, sufficient payment helps the market remain vital. They have enough money to buy things they need, live, and enjoy leisure. It benefits employers and distributes the profits among one´s employees again. This is the virtuous cycle that happens when capitalism and moralism coexist well. Morality makes human beings more like human beings and it increases socio-economic incomes as a whole. So people should make a mutual respect society with an aim at making profits. This attitude can be a solution to society’s problems. Furthermore, it is a key point in improving society. Also, the ‘passion pay’ problem can be solved with this attitude.

  The most immediate solution is to change recognition that members of a society have. Employer and employee must be certain of work rights, fixing a compensation system for work and confirming with paper when they have diverse labor relationships such as internships, practices, extramural activities, part time jobs, etc. This is a win-win payment system. Every person in a society should recognize it. We need one more thing to change society: laws and guidelines enacted by the government, especially in regards to new work experiences such as university job trainee, internships, etc. The Ministry of Employment and Labor announced a ‘guideline for internship application’. Maybe it will be a cornerstone of the solution to unfair treatment in the workplace.