Models to link the employment service organizations and the vocational training II - Civil employment service organizations and self-support programs

This research was conducted as a following research to the 『Models to link the employment service organizations and the vocational training I - A report on the actual conditions of civil employment service organizations in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province -』 in 1999. Problems of the public employment service organizations and the government's unemployment countermeasures, adjusted after the economic crisis, are the limited scope of application, low effectiveness due to the suppliers-oriented policies and services, and the impossibility to provide programs, benefits or services meeting the characteristics of the unemployed and the low-income people.

Efforts to expand the scope of application of public unemployment countermeasures were active in nongovernmental sector. Citizens, social and labor organizations began to meddle showing interests to the "Unemployed Relief Civil Movement" or service provisions for the jobless and the low-income bracket. These efforts were established as a form of civil employment service organizations as defined in the research of 1999. Despite the limitation of small scope, these civil employment service organizations have greatly contributed in providing job opportunities, consulting, and job referral services for the unemployed and the low-income people who hardly have accesses to the public employment service organizations.

Especially, public employment service organizations in regional labor offices couldn't even properly operate functions such as the distribution of the labor market programs, payment of the unemployment benefits, and job referrals for the employment insurance subscribers. And public works programs and short-term livelihood protection programs conducted at a national level as short-term unemployment countermeasures were operated by local autonomous entities. Civil employment service organizations showed a possibility of specialized unemployment and poverty policies for each target group, performing a function of 'one-stop-service' integrating the employment service and the welfare service for the vulnerable unemployed and low-income people. This form of providing services is expected to be institutionalized as self-support programs, together with the introduction of the National Basic Livelihood Protection Act in October 2000.

The act provides that proper supports should be given for the self-support of public assistance recipients with working abilities and the major operation of the self-support programs should be entrusted to non-governmental sector. This means that a groundwork has been established for the self-support programs for the low-income people operated by civil employment service organizations to be institutionalized as programs for the labor market entrance of some public assistance recipients. This seems to be a help in reorganizing the vulnerable-bracket-oriented employment services to recipients-oriented services. Based on the survey on the actual conditions of civil employment service organizations, which are expected to perform a core role in strengthening the labor market entrance programs of public assistance recipients, this research considered the future prospect on the self-support programs, relations between the self-support programs and the active labor market policies, and trade unions' positions on these two policy areas.

The first section undertakes to outline problems, which could be lodged by trade unions on relations between civil employment service organizations and the self-support programs. The second section reviews the characteristics of the employment policies, self-support programs, poverty policies, and the relations among those three areas. Newly operated self-support programs system for the public assistance recipients are examined in the aspect of the diversification of administrative subjects and the localization in the third section. And in the fourth section, conclusions from the survey on the realities of civil employment service organizations are analyzed. The last section discusses the future prospect of the self-support programs and trade unions' duties to establish desirable relations between the employment policies and the self-support programs. The appendix reviews the recent position of the Federation of German Trade Unions facing the changes of the labor market policies and the relations between the trade unions and Koordinierungsstelle gewerkschaftlicher Arbeitslosengruppen, and also introduces the ways that trade unions intervene the unemployed support services and any suggestive points to Korea.

The meaning of this research is that the research suggested policy viewpoints which trade unions could take, based on the relations between civil employment service organizations and the self-support programs. After the economic debacle, trade unions have been providing support services for the jobless just like other citizens' or social organizations have. As the poverty and the unemployment skyrocketed in a situation where the public social safety net is very weak, this kind of intervention has been taken for granted as a member of civil society. However, the roles of trade unions cannot be limited only to the recipients of public assistance and the guarantee of rights to live and work of their surrounding brackets. Rather, it seems desirable for trade unions to set up strategies to recognize and support special status of the self-support programs, giving an effort to reform overall framework of the employment policies. It is because the role of pushing for a job creation, not a job destruction, has to be done by trade unions through improving overall framework of the employment policies, even if it may seem inevitable that the success or failure of the self-support programs for public assistance recipients be institutionalized in a form that can be possible only by utilizing capabilities from non-governmental sector.

In this context, the title of this research, a scheme to link the employment service organizations and vocational training, suggests that we need to change separate programs of active labor market policies in the past to more flexible ones meeting the needs of fast-changing labor market system. The structural adjustment used to be progressed focusing on quantitative flexibility of employment in the past. Now trade unions need to modify the employment policies and concentrate more on maintaining and expanding the overall employment, and establishing the infrastructure where trade unions can be ready for supply and demand changes in the labor market and actively cope with them as their foremost role. And the self-support programs should settle down as a field of expanded, strengthened and specialized labor market programs for a target group. In order to gain initiatives in strategic intervention like these, trade unions should participate in regional welfare network of NGOs by integrating regionally diverse civil resources, and engage them as partners in converting policies.

This research was supported by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung. The Ebert Foundation funded part of research expenses as well as supported the stay for the research purpose in Germany. Especially during the stay in Germany, there was a full support from the bureau of labor market policies and international social policies (Abteilung Arbeitsmarktpolitik und internationale Sozialpolitik) of the Federation of German Trade Unions. Also, WSI of Hans Boeckler Foundation, IAT in Gelsenkirchen, Bundesanstalt fuer Arbeit, Gesellschaft fuer innovative Beschaeftigungsfoerderung in Nordrhein Westfalen, SPI in Berlin, professor Günther Schmid in Berlin University, and various organizations and persons in service organisations for the unemployed gave advices and comments. Advices and documents from all of these couldn't be included fully in this report, however these will greatly contribute to future researches as valuable resources of the Research Center of the Federation of Korean Trade Unions.