hankyoreh

practice of forcing workers into “voluntary retirement” widespread

Seven out of 10 people who are working or have worked at companies that have run voluntary retirement programs this year said that the company had pressured employees to retire as part of these programs. This could serve as evidence that a substantial number of companies, faced with severe legal restrictions over layoffs, are taking advantage of voluntary retirement as an easy way to lay workers off.

When an anonymous message board app for company workers called Blind surveyed its users on Dec. 17 about voluntary retirement, 622 out of 1,925 respondents said that their company had offered voluntary retirement over the past year. Of these 622 respondents, 479, or 77%, said that they had either seen their employers pressuring unwilling employees to retire while soliciting applications for voluntary retirement or had experienced this themselves.

Blind is a closed server that allows people to anonymously share their opinions on message boards - known as “lounges” - for their company or area of industry. Recently, a series of posts on the message board of the construction and heavy industry sector has brought attention to Doosan Infracore, which has viewed even new employees as being eligible for layoffs.

As of Dec. 21, message boards had been created for 60 industries and 919 companies with 300 or more employees.

The most common method by which companies forced workers to accept voluntary retirement - selected by 158 respondents - was by threatening them with what might happen if they refused the offer, which ranged from being relocated to being made redundant.

Other respondents said that companies had notified employees that they had been selected as being eligible for voluntary retirement (141) and that companies had assigned quotas of voluntary resignations for each department and insisted that some people would have to resign (60).

There were also examples of companies that would take work from employees that had been designated for retirement or physically isolate them from other employees (39) and companies that would subject employees to psychological pressure through unending interviews, humiliation, and abusive language (39). There were also 24 respondents who said that a superior or team leader at their company had asked or urged them to retire.

Even if a company runs a voluntary retirement program, its employees are not obligated to participate. But there is in fact no kind of institutional safeguard that can prevent companies from pressuring its employees to retire, experts say.

“The issue of forcing employees to accept voluntary retirement is one that’s very hard to deal with on an individual level. Employees need to respond in unison or to seek the assistance of labor experts,” said Yu Seong-gyu, a labor attorney with a law firm called Chamter.

“According to the Labor Standards Act, a company that is planning to lay off workers must meet with a representative of the workers to deliberate the standards for the layoff,” Yu said. “If there is no organization to speak on behalf of workers, the layoff can proceed however the company wishes.”

By Park Hyun-jung, staff writer

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