hankyoreh

In tandem with the country’s Non-regular Workers’ Protection Law took effect on July 1, many companies have replaced non-regular employees or temporary workers hired by themselves with short-term contractors hired by temporary agencies.

Under the new law, companies are required to treat their non-regular employees on par with their regular workers by granting permanent worker status to non-regular workers who have worked in the same job for more than two years.

One day before the implementation of the new law, Hyundai Department Store reshuffled about 500 cashiers with permanent status to other departments on June 29, forcing the remaining nearly 100 non-regular cashiers under short-term contracts with the company to sign new contracts with temporary agencies. Lotte Department Store also terminated contracts with 43 of their non-regular employees, giving them no choice but to sign new contracts with outside staffing agencies as well.

All of these employees were forced to change their legal status - from non-regular employees with temporary contracts at their companies to people with contracts at temporary employment agencies - even though they will be doing the same job in the stores as before the change in their legal status.

Hana Bank has also recently begun to use temporary workers from temporary agencies for its vacancies. Hana Bank urged some of its individual, non-regular staff members whose contracts expire this month to seek employment with temporary staffing companies.

Fierce labor-management conflicts have arisen at E. Land Group affiliates Homever and New Core, as these retail chains have decided to replace non-regular cashiers with workers from temporary agencies.

The rush of companies to change their staffing policies is said to be attributed to its worries over a potential increase in employment costs, following a change in status of non-regular workers to regular workers; namely, it would be financially advantageous for the companies to fire non-regular workers and outsource their jobs.

According to a recent survey conducted in March by the Korea Labor & Society Institute (KLSI) headed by Kim Yu-seon, temporary workers accounted for just 4.8 percent of the nation’s approximately 4.8 million non-regular workers as of March 2007. Many experts, however, say that companies have outsourced the once short-term contract workers’ jobs to temporary staffing companies since the nation implemented the new law governing non-regular workers.

In fact, data by the Ministry of Labor shows that as of March the number of temporary workers had increased 90,000 and 40,000, respectively, when compared with August of last year.

In connection with the expansion of indirect employment of this kind, the labor sector is worried that labor conditions will worsen. In addition, experts say that workers’ basic labor rights could be infringed upon as the question of who is employing workers from temporary agencies is nebulous. It could be the company with which the workers were once employed or the temporary agency with which the workers have been forced to contract.

Kim Ju-hwan of the Working Voice, an advocacy group for non-regular workers, said, ‘‘If competition among temporary agencies gets any more fierce, it could push the wages of temporary workers lower and lower, worsening labor conditions.’’ The wages of temporary workers and outsourced workers are 55.5 percent and 42.5 percent, respectively, compared with those of regular workers at the same job.

The companies, however, have maintained that they can use outsourcing agencies to prevent a situation in which there are less jobs for non-regular workers due to the implementation of the Non-regular Workers’ Protection Law. Ryu Gi-jeong, an official of the Korea Employers Federation, said, ‘‘People should leave employment decisions that companies make for their employees to the companies.’’