On the afternoon of the 26th of last month, the Cleaning Research Institute, a cleaning platform company, is conducting cleaning manager training for middle-aged women at the Gangbuk 50 Plus Center in Gangbuk-gu, Seoul. Reporter Park Ji-young
☞Subscribe to the Hankyoreh newsletter H:730. Type ‘Hankyoreh h730’ in the search bar. “What I’ve been doing at home so far is cleaning, but it’s better if I get paid for it. “Isn’t this platform where I can work as much as I want, when I want, really cool?” Mr. Lee (55), who started his first economic activity as a sales employee at a department store about 10 years ago when his second son was in the 6th grade of elementary school, recently decided to look for another job. This is because the cost of living is increasing due to rising prices every day. He came to the idea of taking advantage of his twice-weekly holidays to work at least a short-term part-time job. Meanwhile, Mr. Lee said that he was recommended to be a ‘cleaning platform manager’ by a ‘water purifier coordinator’ whom he had always known. Mr. Lee said, “As I get older, I can no longer get a full-time job, and I don’t want to live while raising my grandchildren while receiving money from my children. “I want to live confidently while earning money and working to the best of my ability, even though I have the same household expenses,” he said. On the 26th of last month, the lecture room on the second floor of the Gangbuk 50 Plus Center, a job support center for middle-aged people in Gangbuk-gu, Seoul, was crowded with middle-aged women in their 50s and 60s who came to become ‘cleaning managers’ like Lee. The number of cleaning managers belonging to ‘Cleaning Research Institute,’ a cleaning and housework service platform launched in 2017, exceeded 100,000 early this year. The difference was in providing uniform quality cleaning services to users by systemizing the cleaning services previously provided by housekeepers at human resource offices. In addition, the barriers to using cleaning services have been lowered, such as quick reservation and payment through the Cleaning Lab app and provision of 1-2 hours of service at a time. The Cleaning Research Institute explained, “About 80% of all managers are middle-aged female housewives in their 50s and 60s, and membership is rapidly increasing as word of mouth spreads about the work environment and salaries.” On this day, the first period of the cleaning manager training was conducted in the following order: the customer response manual, the second period how to clean, and the third period how to use the platform app. “Even if it’s awkward, you have to follow it and it will stick in your mouth. ‘Hello, customer. ‘I’m the manager of a cleaning lab.’ I’ll give it a try.” The 25 middle-aged female trainees who participated in the training that day were engrossed in the training, repeatedly answering “Yes, sir,” following the commands of the instructor in charge of training new managers. Mr. Choi Amugae (55), who works as an elderly care worker for three hours a day, said, “My career has been interrupted for the past 10 years while living with my parents-in-law, so I can only find a job in the service industry such as a care worker. “She was now physically too tired to work full-time as a care worker, so looking for a place where she could work even on a short-term basis, she ended up taking a job as a cleaning manager,” she said. Lee Dae-hyang (65), a cleaning manager for three years, said, “I can’t work full-time because I’m taking care of my sick mother-in-law, but I’m satisfied because I can use the app to work whenever I want and make a little money. “I work 4 hours a day, about 20 hours a week,” he said. The Cleaning Research Institute said, “The average working hours per week per manager is 20 hours, and the proportion of people who use spare time or work as ‘N jobbers’ because they are able to do activities freely reaches 35%. “For a better working environment, we have been providing various benefits since the beginning of the service, including damage insurance, performance bonuses, congratulations and condolences, holiday gifts, flu shots, and loan support,” he said. In fact, according to the ‘August 2023 Economically Active Population Survey Supplementary Survey Results by Work Type’ announced by Statistics Korea last month, among the increase in part-time workers (186,000 compared to August of the previous year), 62.4% (116,000) were women aged 60 or older. ) was found to be occupied. Kim Jong-jin, senior research fellow at the Korea Labor and Society Research Institute, said, “The biggest advantage of platform work is that it is free to enter and work when you want. “The platform industry is growing, but there is no social safety net,” he said. “In particular, the problem of the wage gap among middle-aged women is clearly visible in the platform labor market, so it is not the level of support provided by individual platform companies, but national level support such as social insurance and minimum income guarantee.” “There is an urgent need to expand the social safety net,” he said. Meanwhile, all cleaning manager activities, such as recording working hours and connecting users, are all carried out through apps using mobile phones. The middle-aged women I met that day said, “I’m not afraid of new apps or technologies anymore. He also said, “You have to learn to survive.” A cleaning manager official explained, “We tried to develop an intuitive and easy-to-use app for managers in their 50s to 60s.” Reporter Park Ji-young jyp@hani.co.kr
2023-11-14 20:00:21
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