노인일자리사업과 지속가능한 노동 ― 복지 그 자체로서의 노동 ―

As the number of elderly people in Republic of Korea is soaring, the elderly job supporting programs provided by the central government and local authorities become more significant. For sustainable labor, it is necessary to broaden the elderly job supporting programs both quantitatively and qualitatively. But there is a critical issue about carrying out the elderly job supporting program. That is whether a participant in the program is an employee or not. If s/he is an employee, labor law should applies to her/him and budget problem would happen to the central government or local authorities. So the government treats participants in the program(especially the Gonik-type participants among four types) as the volunteers in order to avoid the appliance of labor law because the process of judging whether they are employees is rather complicated and appear non-employees according to constitutions of the operating agencies. However they must be the employees of their agency implementing the program, based on the actual situation of their employment relationship. Through new legislation or law revision these problems can be solved clearly. For the elderly their jobs are beyond meaning of the source of their salaries. Labor might be welfare in itself. Lawmakers have to consider this point when they make new law.