The Ministry of Labor announced that age discrimination in recruitment and hiring will be banned from March 2009.
The ban is based on the recent revision of the “Aged Employment Act” into the “Age-based Employment Discrimination Prohibition and Aged Employment Promotion Act”.
According to the revised act, employers are banned from making age discrimination in recruitment and hiring from March 21, 2009.
It is also prohibited for employers to discriminate against workers on the basis of age regarding wage, welfare, education and training, assignment, transfer, promotion and dismissal. The ban on age discrimination for issues other than recruitment and hiring will take effect from January 1st, 2010.
The act also prohibits indirect discrimination by an employer who causes unfavorable results to a certain age group by taking a criteria other than age with no rational reason.
When employers take actions for the above issues but have rational reasons, those actions will not be considered as discrimination.
The rational reasons of such exception given by the act are:
- a certain age is required based on the nature of a job
- Rational differences are made in terms of wage and welfare based on length of service of individual workers
- A retirement age is established according to this act or other acts
- Employers carry out affirmative actions for employment promotion of a certain age group based on this act and other acts
A victim of age discrimination can file a complaint to the National Human Rights Commission. The Commission, after reviewing the complaint, can advise a concerned company to take a measure to redress the problem and notify the Ministry of Labor of such advice.
The Ministry of Labor, when the company does not comply with the advice and such non-compliance has been repetitious or related to a large number of victims, can issue a correction order to the company upon a victim’s request or on its own decision.
The act also stipulates penalties for each case of violation on the part of employers
- Fine up to 5 million Won for age discrimination in recruitment and hiring
- Negligence fine up to 30 million Won for not complying with a correction order by the Ministry of Labor
- Imprisonment up to 2 years or fine up to 10 million Won for dismissing, transferring, punishing or treating unfavorably a worker who filed a complaint or a suit, submitted a document, testified to a relevant authority for age discrimination
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Afterthought
Right after publishing this post, I found an article covering the same subject here. Looks like I made a mistake of reinveting the wheel. To compensate for my mistake, I’d like to give a personal observation on the topic.
Requiring a certain age for a job in vacancy posts is still a prevalent practice in Korea. Most entry-level jobs are only for people under 30 to 35. When you are 40-something, you have no job openings except for those aimed at senior managers with, very often, requirements of Master’s degree or even doctoral degree. Many job decriptions in job posts for whitecollar workers simply say something like “only those who were born after 1970 can apply.”
I wonder whether this practice will change with the new act. Will victims – job applicants when discrimination in recruitment is at issue – take the trouble of filing complaints to the NHRC or the Ministry of Labor when the correction order, according to the act, will be mainly about the company stopping discrimination or restoring the state of a victim to that before damage?
As an enforcement decree with details on actual enforcement of the act has yet to come and the effective date is one year further, nothing can be said for sure. But I don’t think that most 40 or 50-someting Korean job candidates will go the extra mile only to watch the company pay 5 million Won fine and some more and their own time spent on complaint procedures. I guess that they will just ignore age discriminatory job posts and keep looking for others.