[Editorial] Temporary Workers and the Labor Market

A hotel in Jeju has brought on the wrath of its union for telling its full-time, regular employees it is laying them off because of financial troubles while at the same time using workers contracted through a temporary agency – and most likely breaking the law in doing so. Illegally using temporaries illegally is nothing new and there are ongoing controversies regarding the legality of certain kinds of layoffs. Each instance has its own particularities, but it is where the two problems overlap that one finds the contradictions in labor that exist in our society.

What is even more symbolic about the Jeju hotel is that there is nothing that can be done legally about the fact it is using temporaries contracted illegally while firing its regular workers. What the government usually does when an employer is found to be using "dispatched" temporary workers illegally is to issue a directive about maintaining those jobs instead of ordering that they be let go, because you cannot just make temporary workers lose their jobs because of their employer's illegal methods. Depending on how you look at it that makes sense.

Laying off regular workers is considered legitimate when a company is facing serious difficulties. You can call it "immoral" when a company hires temporary workers while kicking out its regular employees, but legally there is nothing that can be done. Subsequently you have dumbfounding situations like the one going on at the hotel in Jeju.

Preventing companies from illegally contracting temporary "dispatched" workers ahead of time will be critical if the country is to avoid a decline in the quality of employment because of such methods. When companies call for more hiring of irregular workers and easier layoffs they talk about the need for flexibility in the labor market, but their real goal is to cut labor costs. That would be hard to deny if you look at how labor has changed since the financial crisis of 1997. Nothing would be as effective in fighting the problem as making sure a company suffers serious financial loss upon being found to have illegally contracted temporaries. Naturally, it would be just as necessary to reduce the difference in pay between regular and irregular workers. Such measures would also be shortcuts to lessening insecurities about employment and economic disparity.

The Hankyoreh, 17 January 2006.

[Translations by Seoul Selection]