한국탄광노동의 分析 = An Analysis of the Korean Coal Mining Labor

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

1. Preliminary Study
The anthracite is one of the most important sources of energy for homes and industry. The amount of anthracite production of South Korea in 1961 was about 5,670 thousand metric tons. The amount was equivalent to 30.5% of the Korean total energy supplied by both domestic and foregin sources. If we exclude the energy of the charcoal, grass, etc., the percentage ratio of anthracite energy to total energy would be about 71.0%. This shows how important is the Korean anthracite industry for her economy. And yet almost no research work has been done in this field, especially in the area of the mining labor. The purpose of this paper is, therefore, to analyze the labor conditions and structure in the korean coal (anthracite) mining industry.
The research materials used for this analysis are: (1) questionnaires by the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs of Korea intended to make a survey on labor of the Korean industrial establishments in August, 1962, (2) questionnaires by the above ministry intended to make a survey on wages of the Korean mining establishments in Mya, 1962, (3) data whichⅠobtained from the field study at the Kangwon-don Coal Area during the period from March 3 to March 13, 1963, (4) published and unpublished data of the Dai Han Coal Corporation, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, the Korean Reconstruction Bank, etc.
The structure and conditions of the Korean coal mining labor show a great variety and particular problems depending upon the scales of the establishments which range from small and medium scale private mines to modernized private or governmental large scale mines. Therefore, as the basis for the following analysis,Ⅰclassified 95 anthracite mining establishments of Korea into six groups according to the number of workers employed (Table 4, Page 3). As the number of workers increases, the number of establishments which employ them decreases. In extreme cases, while Group 1, which is of the smallest scale employing 5∼49 workers, contains 39 establishments, Group Ⅵ of the largest scale employing 1,000∼4,365 workers contains only 6 establishments.
2. Structure of the Labor
At the end of August, 1962 the Korean government owned the largest six establishments of Group Ⅵand employed 11,035 workers which amounted to about 47% of 23,429 workers in all the Korean anthracite mines. However, the number of workers employed by the remaining 89 private establishments belonging to the groups from GroupⅠto GroupⅤwere only 12,394, 53% of the total workers, and the relative despersion of the workers in GroupsⅠ∼Ⅴwas greater than that of the workers in GroupⅥ. This shows that the six governmentowned establishments employ nearly the smae number of workers as the 89 private establishments and the latter are not only small but differ significantly in the size of their scales. Especially, the fact that there are so many small scale establishments in Group 1, about 41% of the total, makes it difficult to modernize the mining equipments, to allocate the resources effectively, and to improve the labor conditions.
23,429 workers of the Korean anthracite industry consisted of 22,741 male and 688 female workers. The componental percentage ratios were 97.1% and 2.9% respectively. As for the type of employment of the female workers, 641 were permanent and 47 were daily or temporary. Out of the female permanent workers, the numbers of the production workers (almost all of them were engaged in the dressing of coal), administrative and other workers, and miscellaneous workers, were 479, 42 and 120 respectively. We can see that, as the scale of employment increases, the number of permanent female workers tend to increase sharply, while the number of daily or temporary female workers decrease.
In every group throughout all the scales, the majority of the workers belonged to the age class of 30∼39 years totaling to 53.2% of the whole workers, and the percentage ratio of workers between 20∼50 years to all the workers was above 95%. The average age of the productive workers in Group Ⅵ was about 31.5, which was slightly lower than that of about 32.0 years of the whole workers in the group.
In the case of the D-establishment of Group Ⅵ, the average age of the underground workers was about 30.5 years, 57.4% of them were included in the age class of the 21-30 years, and over 90% of them were between 21∼40 years, while the average age the of surface workers was 31.8 years, 43.1% of them were included in the age class of 21∼30 years, and about 83% of them were between 21∼40 years. The difference of the age structure between the underground and the surface workers means that the intensity of underground work was greater than that of surface labor. The average age of the two kinds of workers was 30.8 years.
The relative number of uneducated workers to the total workers in each group increased to reach about 30% in Group Ⅳ and thereafter decreased sharply to 13% in Groups Ⅴ and Ⅵ. But the college graduates increased from 1.0% of Group Ⅱ to 2.6% of Group Ⅵ. This is because the productivity of the small scale coal mines depended largely on the unskilled direct labor, while at the large scale coal mines with modern capital equipments, skilled, administrative, clerical, and technical labor or educated persons were increasingly needed. Not much difference of education was found between the surface and the underground labor.
Table 15 and Fig. 1 on Page 9 show the composition of the coal mining workers of Group Ⅵ by the term of employment at the end of Dec., 1962. Their average term of employment was 3.6 years. This appears to be remarkably short period in view of the fact that it meeds at least 3 years to master a type of coal mining labor. It is of great interest that there are two troughs in Fig. 1, one at the one-year-and-more and the other at the 4-year-and-more, for they show that most of the coal workers are generally forced to leave their work twice during their employment. They say that the former case results from their personal affairs and dismissal by their employer and the latter case comes from their personal affairs and accidents as well.
Out of the workers in 95 anthracite mining establishments, 21,508 persons were permanently employed and 1,921 persons temporarily or daily employed. According to Table 16, the ratio of the temporary and daily workers to the permanent workers in the small and medium scale private mines of Groups Ⅱ∼Ⅴ was approximately one to five, which is three times larger than the ratio of one to 15 of the Japanese mining workers in 1957.
While the percentage ratio of the permanent production workers to the whole permanent workers of each group increased at first from the level of 90% to reach 95% in Group Ⅲ and then decreased to and remained at 80% level, the ratio of the administrative, clerical and other workers to the permanent workers was nearly fixed at 5%. If we divide the production workers into mining workers and technical workers, the componental ratio of mining workers decreased from 88% at GroupⅠto 67% at Group Ⅵ, whereas the ratio of the technical workers increased gradually to reach 21% at Group Ⅵ. This explains the fact that as the scale of establishments and the resulting capital equipments increase, the demand for the technical workers increases relative to the mining workers.
According to Table 19, which is computed from each coal mine's Monthly Production Reports to the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, the percentage ratio of the underground workers to the whole production workers in the Korean anthracite industry was about 77.5%, which was moderately higher than the ratio of 68.86% shown by the Japanese coal industry im March, 1954. The underground workers play a primary roll in the coal mining works and it is traditional to think that the efficiency of the mining depends on the ratio of the underground workers to the whole workers. However, without the adequate allocation of labor the surface and underground according to the particular conditions of the mine, safety and health of the underground workers will not be secured satisfactorily. In fact, the ratio of the underground workers to the whole production workers was about 82% at the production range of monthly output 1,000∼10,000 tons and about 76% both at the ranges of 10,000-tons-and-more and less-than-10,000 tons of monthly output. Thus, the defference in the ratio does not necessarily represent the degree of rationalization or the efficiency of the mine.
If we define "the rate of entrance(or withdrawal)" as the anual change in the number of workers newly employed (or withdrawn) over the total workers in an industry at the end of the previous year, the rate of excess entrance (that is, defference between the rate of entrance and the rate of withdrawal in the same period) in the Korean anthracite mining industry during one year from September 1, 1961 to August 31, 1962 was 44%, which indicated the growth of the industry during the period. In GroupⅠ, though the rate of withdrawal was at the highest 55.8%, of the rate of excess entrance was extremely high level of 192.1%, which reflected the abnormally increased rate of entrance of 247,9% during the period. As we see in Bables 20 and 21, the entrance increase of small-sized establishments such as GroupⅠ,Ⅱ an Ⅲ resulted not only from the expansion of the existing establishments but also form the increase in their numbers, while that of relatively large scale establishments such as Group Ⅳ,Ⅴ, and Ⅵ was due solely to the expansion in size.
3. Working Conditions
a) Hours
The length of working hours is so closely associated with the employment, working conditions, productivity, wage level and leisure of workers, that whether it is long or short influences greatly the interest of the employer and the labor. Therefore, the Labor Standards Act set maximum 8 hour work a day and 48 hours a week (Article 42), limiting at the same time to 6 hours a day and 35 hours a week in the case of underground or dangerous work (Article 43), and additionally defining at least one paid holiday per week (Article 45). It should be noted that the 6 hours regulation of the underground work in Korea does not take into account the time spent before reaching their underground working place through the pits.
The realized monthly working days per worker as of August, 1962 was about 26.1 days for the administrative, clerical and other works, 27.7 days for the technical works, and 24.0 days for the mining works(Table 22). The fact that the average monthly working days of the mining workers were two days less than the workable days(26 days excluding holidays) of the month, shows they were forced to absent themselves from their work because of overwork resultant from the Korean piece rate wage system of coal minig.
The realized average daily working hours per worker during that period was about 8 hours for the administrative, clerical and other works,7.2 hours for the technical works and 6.9 hours for the mining works. By Table 23, we can estimate that 6 hours regulation of the underground workers was effective only in Group Ⅵ, but not in other groups.
The kinds of work and their distribution among the daily working hours of the underground "direct" "leading" workers such as miners, supporters, carriers and rock drivers, are shown on Pages 15∼17. Substracting intermediate hours of rest, the practical working hours of all the direct leading workers were less than the maximum 6 hours which is perscribed by the Labor Standards Act. It may be physically impossible to continue 6 hours work ereyday without any kind of intermission.
b) Wages
In the Korean coal mines generally the administrative, clerical and other workers are paid monthly and almost all the production workers are paid daily or on piece rates. Especially the wages of all the underground direct workers are paid on piece rates, which are usually determined by the standard amount of the work such as the rock driverage, the quantity of coal production or the number of timber framework, and the wages are divided between the "leading" worker and their "helpers" in such a proportion as five to four.
Averagedaily wage rates are different depending on either the types of work or the scale of extablishments. To mention the extreme values throughout the whole scales, 95.6 won of the daily wage rate of a miscellaneous worker was the minimum, while 430.52 won of an administrative clerical, and other workers was the maximum. And the average wage rates of a mining worker in GroupⅠand Ⅵ each were 121.63 won and 275.87 won, the wages of a technical worker in Group Ⅱ and Ⅴeach were 136.05 won and 330.31 won, and the wages of an daministrative, clerical, and other workers in Group Ⅱ and Ⅵ each were 177.72 won and 430.52 won respectively (Table 25). Thus, the wage differences in the same type of work by the scales of the establishments were remarkable.
The existence of large wage differences by the scale of establishments shows the backwardness of the wage structure of the Korean coal mining industry. In the western countries, each wage rate is not determined by referring to the length of the worker's service and his experience at the establishment, but by the degree of dexterity and the type of work, so that the same wage rates for the smae work in each industry tend to prevail beyond the establishment.
The large scale establishment can take the advantage of the internal economies which makes the large firms earn the super-normal profits and therefore it gives room labor unions to bargain collectively for their wage raise. However, the minimum wage legislation, social insurance system and the powerful labor union of the western countries do not permit the great difference in wages for the same type of work between establishments. But in Korean, wages are determined independently by each establishments. Hence the great variety of wages among them.
Taking the wages of mining workers as the base, the average wage indices of rock drivers, supporters, carriers, and dressers in the whole industry were 114, 104, 77 and 49 respectively (Table 28). The greatest wage difference according to the type of underground work was shown in Group Ⅵ and the smallest in GroupⅠ. This explains the degree of division of underground labor in each coal mines.
c) Productivity, Casualties and Welfare Facilities
In August, 1962 the monthly average physical productivity per underground worker, production worker and total worker were 33.39M/T, 25.89M/T and 22.02M/T of anthracite respectively. Excluding the case of small scale mines where the statistics are more or less unreliable, the productivity recreased as the scale of the establishments expanded. This is because, at the large mines, factor endowment and capital equipments are superior to the other mines (Table 32).
Accidents occur most frequently and seriously in the coal mining industry than any other industries in Korea. They are, so far, unavoidable because the underground workers, working under millions and millions tons of upper weights, breathing hot, humid and dusty air and hearing anoying noises at the dark and narrow working place, are forced to take risk to mine even a piece of coal or an inch of rocks more, for they are paid on piece rates. As shown in Table 33, in 1962 total casualties of Group Ⅵ were 1,530 persons, out of which 31 persons died, 152 persons were "serious" and 1,347 persons were "slightly" injured. And almost all of these fatal and serous casualties were caused by the underground accidents of mine cars and rooffallings.
Though from 1959 to 1962 there were ups and downs in casualties, we find the decreasing rate of casualties per one million working hours or per one million working tons of production as shown on Table 35. Although the rate of casualties per one million working hours of Groups Ⅵ is compared with that of all the Japanese coal mines on Table 35, the comparison of the rate of the seriously injured between the two countries is impossible because of the difference in definitions of the "seriously" injured. However, the rate of the dead was evidently higher in Korea than in Japan.
The distribution of the educational institutes for the miners, childern, dormitories, public residences, hospitals, welfare and hygienic facilities, and facilities for exercises and recreations are shown by groups on Table 37, where we see the remarkable concentration of those facilites to the large scale establishments.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• 第 1 章 豫備的 考察
• 第 2 章 탄광노동의 構成과 異動
• 第 3 章 勞動時間과 作業內容
• 第 4 章 勞動賃金
• 第 5 章 탄광노동의 生産性·災害 및 厚生