Domestic corporations are half-hearted about establishing workplace nursery facilities.
Under the current Infant Care Act, a company operating a workplace with more than 500 regular workers or more than 300 female employees is required to operate a nursery.
When the company is unable to run such a facility on its own, it may entrust care of the employees’ children to a nearby day care center or pay an infant care allowance to its employees.
But more than half of domestic companies failed to meet this legal duty, according to a survey conducted by the Ministry of Health and Welfare in December 2010.
The ministry surveyed 833 workplaces in Korea that were required to establish nursery facilities. Of them, 406 belonged to private companies, while the remainder were run by public agencies, schools or hospitals.
Among the workplaces of private corporations, a mere 104 had their own nurseries. Nine outsourced child care to external facilities, while 87 paid an infant care allowance to their employees. Combined, they accounted for less than half of the total.
Doosan Group, which had five workplaces required to set up child care facilities, established none as of December 2010. Alarmed by the ministry’s survey, it launched one last September and is set to open two more in September.
Hanwha Group had eight large-scale workplaces but none of them operated their own child care facilities; only one had an outside facility take care of employees’ children.
In the case of Samsung Group, 23 out of the 42 workplaces surveyed had a nursery, five entrusted child care to private facilities, and one paid an allowance to employees.
LG Group had a nursery at 13 of its 26 work sites, while KT Corp. established a care center at eight of its 11 workplaces, with the remaining three using nearby private nurseries.
Workplace nurseries are essential to alleviating the child care burden of working moms and enhancing women’s participation in the labor force.
Korea faces an urgent need to boost women’s workforce participation because the nation’s economically active population is forecast to peak in 2016. Yet Korean women’s labor force participation rate is woefully low compared to other OECD countries.
Corporations need to be more positive about workplace nurseries as they help female employees harmonize work and family and stay in the workforce after childbirth.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare said it would disclose the list of companies that neglect its duty to establish workplace nurseries. But this will not be enough. It needs to use a carrot-and-stick approach to induce companies to meet the legal requirement.
