[매경이코노미스트] ‘Teacher’ rather than ‘aunt’ in the Philippines – MK Billiard

However, there are many counterarguments to bringing an aunt from the Philippines. In particular, they are critical of why administrative power and financial resources should be invested when the benefits are limited to a very small number of high-income people. In response, the city of Seoul appears to be taking the stance of lowering their wages even lower than the minimum wage and increasing supply to make it more accessible to middle-class households. However, this raises several controversies, such as whether it is reasonable to not apply the minimum wage to foreigners brought in as workers and whether there will be any impact on the labor market for Koreans.

Furthermore, if access to many households is increased by lowering wages and increasing supply, it is questionable whether the original policy goal can be achieved. As the demand base increases due to low prices, advance reservations must be made through competition, either on a first-come-first-served basis or through a lottery, for key times and dates, and once a reservation is successful, it is difficult to cancel. Individual dual-income families may not be able to make a reservation at the time and date they want, and if the schedule is uncertain, they may be reluctant to make a reservation at all. In the end, the more desperate ‘high demand consumers’ are, the more they have to prepare a different plan C in advance, which diverges the policy outcome from the goal of work-family balance.

How about allowing multiple children to share care services provided by foreign workers? Considering that the government supervises selection and education, in the Philippines, instead of selecting women with college degrees and having them work in each home as housekeepers, women who graduated from teachers’ colleges are selected as ‘after-school assistant teachers’ to work in care facilities. You can think of a way to do it. If we allow them to take a Korean language course in the morning and care for multiple children after school at a care facility such as a local children’s center, they will become a strong ally in balancing work and family with only minimum wage level wages.

As of 2021, there are 4,295 local children’s centers nationwide, and 477 in Seoul alone. Local children’s centers are free facilities, and their use is limited to children from low-income families, single parents, or multicultural families. Let’s expand this so that children from dual-income families can also use local children’s centers after school, assuming cost sharing. Instead of making it available to everyone, let’s convert the facility usage fee to a paid facility and provide subsidies to existing users. Let’s use those resources to invest more in local children’s centers and recruit talented domestic and foreign workers. The number of local children’s centers will increase, and countless dual-income families will benefit.

In addition to local children’s centers, there are various care services. However, because the purpose of introducing such systems was to improve the welfare of low-income families, sufficient manpower and financial resources were not invested, and as demand for care services was concentrated from after school to late evening, it was difficult to find domestic teachers. The majority of people would welcome a ‘Filipino teacher’ who contributes in the public care service sector more than a ‘Filipino aunt’ who works in an individual home. The key is sharing care. However, this requires cooperation and coordination in a larger framework involving not only the Seoul Metropolitan Government and the Ministry of Employment and Labor, but also the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Health and Welfare, and Ministry of Strategy and Finance.

[심승규 아오야마가쿠인대 국제정치경제학부 교수]

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