hankyoreh

South Korea's Labor Ministry said Tuesday it will re-hire about 54,000 non-regular workers in the public sector as full-time laborers by the end of next year as part of efforts to reduce widespread discrimination against temporary workers.

The measure is key to a set of agreements between the Labor Ministry and the ruling Uri Party on the improvement of working conditions of non-regular workers, Labor Minister Lee Sang-soo said in a press meeting.

Lee said the government will also increase salaries for temporary workers in various public sectors to a level matching their counterparts in private sectors, while working to revise a number of discriminative working conditions.

The government plans to toughen its inspection of state organizations to check whether they discriminate against non-regular workers, and establish educational facilities to deal with the issue, Lee said.

Currently, about 312,000 part-time workers are employed in public organizations, according to official data. Discrimination against them has been a constant source of disputes between the government, management and labor organizations.

Seoul, Aug. 8 (Yonhap News)