[Reporter’s Notebook] People Who Do Not Even Receive the Minimum Wage

Over the past five years, an average of 2,022 cases per year have been recorded of people in South Korea not receiving the minimum wage. This number only reflects cases captured by government statistics, and it is estimated that the actual number of affected workers is higher.

Every year, the increase in the minimum wage is a major social issue, but there is little attention paid to those who do not receive the minimum wage. Until now, minimum wage statistics have only disclosed the number of reports and processing cases, cases by business size, and actions taken. More detailed data was needed, so a request was made to the Ministry of Employment and Labor, but their cooperation was quite limited, and it took over three months. Through two requests via a member of the National Assembly, data by local employment and labor offices under regional branches was obtained. However, analysis by city or province was still impossible, so the data had to be grouped by regions. Convenience store statistics were not provided at all. Considering that last year the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety provided data on convenience stores’ violations of the Food Sanitation Act, the Ministry of Employment and Labor’s response was incomprehensible.

In the end, an information disclosure request had to be filed against the Ministry of Employment and Labor and the Labor Offices. The notification included the absurd response that "there is no program in place to compile and process the relevant information, making data extraction difficult." Looking at the data by labor office, the volume is not overwhelming, and it is believed that simple counting or basic Excel work would be sufficient to understand it. Therefore, an administrative appeal was filed but was not accepted, which is very regrettable. If these figures had been disclosed, it is believed that the number of violations by large distribution companies such as convenience stores would have significantly improved.

It is time for convenience store headquarters to directly inspect and manage stores violating the minimum wage. The ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) management emphasized by convenience stores must start with zero cases of minimum wage violations. When the day comes that statistics on minimum wage violations by convenience stores are made public, it will cause significant damage to their brand image and lead to rejection by their main customer base, the MZ generation (Millennials + Generation Z).