hankyoreh

A couple of weeks into the introduction of a controversial law designed to improve working conditions for non-regular employees, labor activists argue that many local companies are rushing to remove previously contracted workers from their payrolls. Businesses maintain that the new law may add more financial burden on them.

The progressive Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) and the conservative Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU), the nation’s two largest labor umbrella groups, each announced on July 13 the results of on-site inspections conducted at local companies to investigate discrimination and other kinds of unfair practices in the employment of non-regular workers.

The inspections were conducted only weeks after the non-regular worker protection law took effect on July 1. Under the law, businesses are required to change the status of their non-regular employees to that of regular employees if their labor contracts are kept for more than two years.

According to the results of the inspections by KCTU, non-regular workers at 18 companies, ranging from hospitals to construction firms, banks and government agencies, were laid off or assigned to other jobs against their will.

The KCTU said that Seoul National University (SNU) Hospital, though it agreed with its union to gradually change the status of their non-regular workers in compliance with the new law, has laid off 70-80 such employees this year alone by revoking their employment contracts ahead of the two-year deadline. In addition, Save Zone, a retail outlet, outsourced 230 cashiers, while the Bank of Korea replaced secretaries with temporary workers in April.

According to the FKTU, which conducted its own inspection by visiting 56 companies between July 4-22, the Korea Expressway Corporation is currently moving to outsource its 2,000 non-regular workers and Korea Post, Korea’s postal service, also plans to replace its 3,000 letter carriers, delivery people and postal workers with workers from temporary agencies. Both companies are state affiliates.

The unions’ findings also revealed that Seoul National University Hospital was found to have employed non-regular workers under contracts with employment terms set at zero months to allow for an immediate layoff of workers.

Kang, whose name was withheld for reasons of privacy and who worked at SNU until earlier this month when he was fired, reportedly signed five employment contracts with the management at intervals of six-months each. None of the contracts reportedly specified how long he could work at the hospital.

FKTU said that a non-regular worker at a local government office in Seoul has been doing his job for the past eleven years without any written employment contract, only to be notified recently that the contract had expired.

In response to the union’s claims, a representative from the Korea Expressway Corporation said, “We have been outsourcing jobs since 1995 and the replacement process for 2,000 non-regular workers will be complete by the end of 2009,” denying any intention of using outsourcing as a way around the new law.

Seoul National University Hospital also rebuked the claim, saying that there were only 14 non-regular workers who had quit between December of last year and April of this year and all of them had done so of their own accord. The other companies mentioned in the report also dismissed the results of the inspection, saying that the figures were overly exaggerated or otherwise groundless.

The two labor groups, however, countered that the number of those who were fired or assigned to other jobs against their will, in tandem with the new non-regular worker protection law in place, would actually be much higher if all cases which occurred behind closed doors were also included.

Meanwhile, the FKTU, the Ministry of Labor and the Korea Employers Federation (KEF), an interest group for business, held a joint conference on July 13 in which they agreed to cooperate in protecting the job security of non-regular employees across the nation.

The KCTU, an umbrella union and FKTU rival, did not join the conferece. Woo Mun-suk, a KCTU spokesperson, said, “We need a new law to protect non-regular workers, rather than just rhetoric which has no guarantee of being carried out.” “The three parties pushed forward with the flawed non-regular worker protection law against the opposition of the KCTU, which then claimed that the law would aggravate the job security of non-regular workers, rather than protect them,” she added.

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]