The NHRCK (Chairperson Byung-chul Hyun) held a <Conference on the Result of the situational investigation on the human rights situation of social workers> on 14 November 2013 (Thurs) at 3 PM on the 10th floor of the Human Rights Education Center Annex Building.
2,808 Social Workers in Korea (2,486 from private social welfare facilities, 136 from schools, 186 from the public sector) have participated in the investigation which were conducted from March to October 2013 through surveys, thematic interviews, and analyses of each social welfare facilities.
According to the investigation, many issues concerning working conditions of private and school social workers are yet to be improved despite the increasing social attention on social workers which led to the adoption of a legislation to improve treatment of social workers in 2011.
Social workers are paid lower than other professional health and welfare human resources as their payments amount to 1.96 million won, 80% of the average wage among wage workers (2.43 million won, based on Korea Statistics) and are subject to long-hour labor.
Also, social workers are subject to higher threat against their physical security such as verbal harassment, physical violence and sexual harassment. In particular, 80% of public social workers had experiences of being verbally assaulted by civil petitioners, and social workers at schools had dramatically more frequent experiences of being sexually harassed by their superiors than social workers in other fields (school social workers 9.8%, social workers at community facilities 1.4%, public servants 3.9%).
Moreover, social workers were vulnerable to depression and exhaustion due to lack of remedial measures. In terms of emotional labor, social workers marked 3.9 out of 5, and public social workers marked 4.2, showing high intensity of emotional labor.
72.3% of social workers are women, and 92.2% of social workers at schools are women. Therefore, issues of physical security such as verbal and sexual harassment and other forms of violence, and the situations concering non-regular female social workers need to be addressed.
“The Conference on the Result of the situational investigation on the human rights situation of social workers” was held to share the results of the investigation and gather different views from relevant experts on the draft of the investigation report.
