가사근로자의 법적지위에 관한 연구

It is one of the important tasks of the employment and labor policies to increase the employment rate of women and support the reconciliation of work and family life. In the process of implementing the task, the supply and demand is expected to increase sharply for the care work such as domestic labor, nursing, and home child care. The care work that can serve as a new frontier for job creation needs to be developed from a poor and vulnerable work to a decent work. To achieve this, legal foundation is required to be established to clarify its concept and secure proper level of protection. The nation's labor standards act makes it absolutely clear that it is not applied to domestic workers. The followings are quoted as the main reasons for it; the domestic labor is not for business or privacy needs to be protected or there are limitations in carrying out labor inspection. The above-mentioned reasons, however, have weak validity as a logical ground for not applying the labor standards act to domestic workers. According to the research conducted by the ILO on 65 countries, only 9 countries including Japan, Egypt, Turkey, and Jordan do not explicitly apply labor standards act to domestic workers. Therefore, legislative approach is needed for applying labor standards act to domestic workers. 3 methods can be suggested as concrete ways to apply labor standards act to domestic workers. First, labor standards act can be applied to domestic workers just like average workers. Second, only some clauses whose applicability is stated in the labor standards act can be applied. Third, some working conditions can be protected by enacting a special law instead of labor standards act. Given that domestic workers have different characteristics compared to average workers, the second and the third methods can be satisfactory alternatives. Considering the overall system of the labor standards act, however, the third method is the better solution.