Gwangju City Council Member Park Mijeong Urges Immediate Improvement in Public Care Manager Treatment

Concerns Raised Over Gwangju City's New Year Briefing
Calls for Improvement in Working Conditions for Care Managers

Mijeong Park, Gwangju City Council Member.

At the Gwangju City Council, concerns were raised about the need to improve the working conditions of care managers who provide public care services to citizens.

Park Mijeong, a member of the Gwangju City Council (Democratic Party of Korea, Dong-gu 2), stated at the Welfare and Environment Committee's 2025 Gwangju City Welfare and Health Bureau briefing on the 5th, "From this year, all care managers at the Gwangju Social Service Institute have been switched to part-time positions," and emphasized, "To provide quality care services to citizens, it is necessary to guarantee sufficient working hours for care managers."

The Gwangju Social Service Institute unified the employment type of care managers to part-time only from this year, instead of the previous various types such as full-time and part-time.

As a result, even regular care managers are now paid only for the hours spent inside the homes of care recipients, under the part-time system.

This structural issue of hourly wages leads to gaps in care services and a sharp decrease in the wages of care workers, threatening their livelihoods. In addition, the part-time system fails to recognize travel time and unavoidable waiting time as working hours for care managers.

The care service labor union is demanding that care managers be guaranteed at least three working hours per day and 60 hours per month, which is the minimum required to qualify for the four major social insurances.

Park emphasized, "As we enter a super-aged society, the importance of elderly care is growing day by day, but the treatment and working environment of care workers remain poor," and added, "It is necessary to strengthen social responsibility for care and establish fundamental measures so that the value of care work is recognized."

Meanwhile, on the 3rd, Park held an "Emergency Meeting on Guaranteeing Labor Rights for Care Workers" to listen to the opinions of Gwangju City and the care workers' union of the Social Service Institute.