There are frequently reported cases that the cleaning service workers are paid below minimum wage and exposed to the abuse of human rights and the violation of labor rights under the vulnerable working conditions. It is argued that these problems are fundamentally caused by the outsourcing of the cleaning service business by the public agencies and institutions.

In recent, the National Assembly made the direct employment contracts with 203 contingent cleaning service workers working there. Seoul Metropolitan Government also changed 1,367 indirectly employed contingent cleaning service workers to the direct employment status and another case is presented by Kwangju City Government with directly employing 896 cleaning service workers.

The union representing the contingent cleaning service workers claimed that the silver lining cases of the National Assembly, Seoul City and Kwangju City proved that the budget for the direct employment did not create any financial difficulty but it improved working conditions and secured the employment.

reported by Yoon Ja-eun
translated by Kim Sung-jin