hankyoreh

along with members of civic and religious groups

With the government slated to announce a range of measures for irregular workers next month, the Ministry of Strategy and Finance said that it is considering relaxing the conditions for dismissing regular employees in the interest of reducing the burden that companies will face because of these for irregular workers.

This is a complete reversal of President Park Geun-hye’s promise to tighten the requirements for dismissals, one of the goals of her presidency.

Lee Chan-woo, chief of the ministry’s Economic Policy Bureau, mentioned the comprehensive measures for irregular workers during a press conference on Nov. 24. “The direction we are taking is to balance these measures with more flexible employment. Specifically, we are discussing the idea of simplifying the process of dismissing regular workers,” Lee said.

“We need to improve the working conditions of irregular workers. But since this will place a greater burden on companies, we are thinking about how we can balance those interests.”

Lee added that “relaxing the conditions for dismissals is something that will have to be discussed at the Economic and Social Development Commission.”

The ministry had already conveyed its opinion on the issue to the Ministry of Employment and Labor, which is preparing the set of measures for irregular workers.

Relaxing the requirements for terminating regular workers is presumed to mean revising the Labor Standards Act to make it easier for companies to carry out a layoff. According to Article 24 of the Labor Standards Act, companies are permitted to make workers redundant when such an act is required by dire financial circumstances at the company.

But the act places several conditions on dismissing workers. Management must make an effort to avoid dismissing workers before going ahead with the dismissal; the conditions for selecting workers to be dismissed must be fair and rational; and it has to notify the labor union of the layoff 50 days before it is scheduled to occur and discuss the plans with the union in good faith. Furthermore, the act states that the company must give the dismissed workers preference when hiring over the next three years.

Relaxing the conditions for dismissals would mean permitting a broader interpretation of the term “dire financial circumstances.” Currently, the business community is asking to be allowed to dismiss workers in the interest of “rationalizing management” even when the company is not facing financial difficulties.

Businesses have also been asking for the government to simplify the procedure for dismissing workers. This would mean, for example, shortening the advance notification that companies must provide and reducing the effort they are required to make to avoid dismissing workers.

If the government accepts the argument of business lobbyists and eases the requirements for dismissing regular workers, this would contradict the goals that President Park has defined for her time in office.

In the list of governmental goals announced by the presidential transition committee in Feb. 2013, Park promised to “tighten the requirements for dismissals by specifying in the law what qualifies as an effort to avoid the dismissal. The current legal precedent is that these efforts can include shuffling work responsibilities and putting workers on unpaid leave.”

The government appears to have changed its position since the appointment in July of Choi Kyung-hwan as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Strategy and Finance.

Choi has expressed his opinion about employment measures several times. “Regular workers are being seriously overprotected, and the full retirement age has been extended to 60. What kind of company is going to hire regular workers under these conditions? Something needs to be done about this,” he said on one occasion.

In a phone interview with the Hankyoreh on the issue, Kwon Hyeok-tae, Working Conditions Improvement Bureau Chief at the Ministry of Employment and Labor, said that the ministry had neither reviewed any policies of the sort nor discussed them with the Ministry of Strategy and Finance.

Jeong Yi-hwan, professor of sociology at Seoul National University of Science and Technology, said, “When workers are dismissed in advanced economies, they have a strong social safety net and it is easy to get rehired. But in South Korea, since these conditions are not well established, regular workers fiercely resist being laid off. Easing the requirements for dismissing workers without addressing these larger problems will only increase job insecurity.”

By Kim Kyung-rok, Kim So-youn and Jeon Jong-hwi, staff reporters

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