Time to invite foreign housekeepers

The government and the civic society must cooperate to find effective ways to enhance the quality of housekeeping and child care services while protecting the rights and interests of foreign workers at the same time.

KIM KYUNG-HEEThe author is an economic news reporter of the JoongAng Ilbo. A woman raising two children in Seoul was recently shocked to learn that she was pregnant with a third child. She had been working as her mother helped with child care. But she thought it would be hard to keep going, so she went to a clinic for an abortion but could not carry it out. Now, she or her husband may have to quit their job.

An alternative has been given to working parents with such dilemmas. The Ministry of Employment and Labor will be introducing the “foreign housekeeper” system by the end of this year. The government is hiring 100 foreign housekeepers and will dispatch them to the households of working parents, single parents and pregnant women in their 20s to 40s in Seoul as a trial. The Philippines, which operates a housekeeping license program, is the main employment target. A verifying agency will check their career, language skills and criminal record.

The purpose of the program is clear. The demand for housekeeping and child care increases as an increasing number of parents work, but the supply has decreased. The number of housekeepers in Korea decreased 27 percent in three years, from 156,000 in 2019 to 114,000 last year. Nine out of 10 (92.3 percent) are in their 50s or older. After the government adopted the position that foreign employment is inevitable to quickly ease the burden on users, civic groups claim it could fix the system of low wages for foreign and female workers.

The key is effectiveness. For the system to work as the government wants, quality housekeeping and child care services should be provided at a reasonable cost. The current payment for foreign housekeepers is 9,620 won ($7.26) per hour under the Minimum Wage Act, less than two-thirds that of Korean housekeepers who get paid 15,000 won per hour.

So, foreign housekeepers only earn about 2.01 million won a month, based on a 40-hour workweek. Given the average monthly household income in the first quarter was 5,054,000 won, the discrepancy is quite a burden. Also, there are concerns that high-quality housekeeping services cannot be expected from foreigners who lack an understanding of Korean culture.

The labor structure of low wages and long hours should be improved so that parents can raise children themselves. The problem is that resolving the dilemma of the “population cliff” and “career severance” is urgent when the government can hardly spend a massive budget due to an economic slowdown.

Rather than blindly opposing it with provocative slogans like “modern slavery,” we must find feasible alternatives. The government and the civic society must cooperate to find effective ways to enhance the quality of housekeeping and child care services while protecting the rights and interests of foreign workers at the same time.