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| President Park Geun-hye speaks during a Cabinet meeting at Cheong Wa Dae, Tuesday. / Yonhap |
By Kang Seung-woo
President Park Geun-hye slammed the main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy (NPAD), Tuesday, for its "lack of cooperation" in reforming the labor sector, saying it should join efforts to pass pending labor bills this year.
"With the National Assembly being framed by ideology, it is serving as a representative of the privileged class," Park said during a Cabinet meeting at Cheong Wa Dae.
"The rejection of calls for labor market reform serves to shackle the future of the country as well as the younger generation. Should the Assembly fail to pass the bills, it will face public disappointment and anger."
The remarks are the President's latest call for the National Assembly ― more specifically the opposition ― to pass the bills that she believes will create jobs for young people and revitalize the economy. The nation's unemployment rate for young adults aged between 15 and 29 recorded 7.4 percent in October, according to Statistics Korea.
This was the third Cabinet meeting for Park to attack the Assembly's failure to pass the bills following ones on Nov. 10 and 24.
On Monday, she criticized the NPAD, saying that it just paid lip service to economic revival and wasted time, during a meeting with ruling Saenuri Party Chairman Kim Moo-sung and floor leader Won Yoo-chul. She asked them to step up efforts to pass the pending bills before the National Assembly ends its plenary session today.
However, the NPAD claims that the labor reforms could further place irregular workers at an employment disadvantage.
While urging the endorsement of the revised services-sector law that has been pending at the National Assembly for 1,438 days as of Tuesday, Park condemned the opposition, citing the Roh Moo-hyun administration that also pushed for similar bills to improve industry.
The bill aims at making changes to the country's education, health and medical sectors to make them more competitive and create new business areas and jobs. However, the NPAD stands firm against this, concerned about the fallout such as a rise in consumer costs, particularly in the medical sector.
"President Roh also stressed the importance of improving the health and medical sector, but now the NPAD refuses to do so," Park said. "Who will see the party's intention as innocent?"
According to the presidential office, 700,000 jobs will be created if the services-sector bill is passed.
In response to Park's call, NPAD Chairman Moon Jae-in said that his party can partially cooperate with the passage of the labor reform bills.
"Among the five bills, we can separately pass three bills, and exclude regressive changes to the Labor Law," Moon said in a news conference hosted by the Kwanhun Club, a Seoul-based association of senior journalists.
The three he referred to are the Labor Standards Act, Employment Insurance Act and Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance Act.
However, Moon confirmed the party's opposition to the remaining two: the Act on the Protection of Fixed-Term and Part-Time Workers and Act on the Protection of Temporary Agency Workers, saying that they will help companies fire non-regular workers more easily.
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