Gov’t, in trying to help workers, costs some their jobs

Civil service sector would rather fire contract workers than hire them full-time

Government measures aimed at protecting so-called irregular workers - those with temporary work contracts - have sometimes worked to drive these workers out of their jobs instead.

A 52-year-old irregular worker, identified only by the family name Yun, was fired from his city job in Gwangmyeong, Gyeonggi Province, along with three co-workers, after the government in August announced measures to protect the rights of irregular workers in the public sector. Rather than hire them as full-time workers as the government measures demand, Gwangmyeong City Hall chose to fire them instead. Yun had worked at the city office for six years.

An official of Gwangmyeong City cited the hiring cap on city employees as the reason behind the non-renewal of the four workers’ contracts.

Other local governments will likely do the same to their contract workers. In Siheung, Gyeonggi Province, there are about 200 irregular workers that have worked for the city for periods ranging from a few months to over 10 years. The city, however, plans to dismiss a considerable number of them.

A Siheung city official said of the irregular workers, "They are not eligible to be hired as full employees of the city. We are required to hire private-sector contract workers in their stead," he said, citing budgetary issues.

The situation is the same with irregular workers in the education sector. Rep. Choi Soon-young of the minor opposition Democratic Labor Party (DLP) publicized portions of the minutes from a meeting attended by about 230 educational experts, where the irregular worker issue was discussed.

According to the minutes, one participant asked, "Is there any way to exclude old and high-waged workers from people who will be granted regular workers’ status?" To this question, another participant replied, "I dismissed those workers. You should not be afraid of firing such persons."

Kim In-su, a director at the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), criticized the government measure, saying, "Unless problems like employee hiring caps and budgeting are resolved, all such measures will be failures."

In response, Lee Heon-su, an official of the Ministry of Labor, said that the government would try to improve the measures; for starters, the ministry said it would decide itself which irregular workers in the public sector would be granted regular worker status by May next year.

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