Sending of cronies mars Park's public-sector reform drive

By Choi Sung-jin

As the government presses public agencies to adopt a performance-related salary system, saying it would freeze wages for those that resist the policy, labor unions are protesting the move, threatening general strikes.

The nation’s two umbrella unions – the Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU) and the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) – are making an all-out attack by seeking to form an allied front with opposition parties and filing complaints against top managers of individual agencies.

This means the Park Geun-hye administration’s plan to apply the payment-by-result system to employees at director level or higher - 70 percent of the total - has run into a big stumbling block, officials and unionists said Monday.

Reforming the public sector is one of the four major changes the incumbent administration is pursuing. “We have to raise the public sector’s productivity to that of industrial countries and therefore we can’t help but differentiate workers’ salaries according to their abilities and performances,” a government official said.

Although three other reforms – labor, finance and pensions – have limitations without the parliament’s cooperation, the public-sector reform depends largely on the government’s will, which explains why President Park is taking the lead in implementing the performance-based pay system for state enterprises and other public institutions.

The labor unions are going all out to stop it, however, staging sit-ins in front of the National Assembly, holding protest rallies and threatening a general strike in August or September, with support from two opposition parties. They are also taking the top managers of public corporations, which have already introduced the merit pay system without consultation with unions, to court.

Neutral experts want the government and unions to meet halfway.

“The government needs to make more efforts to persuade unionists,” said Bae Kyu-shik, a fellow at the Korea Labor Institute. “Most low-echelon officials have complaints and distrust in the new system because of what they perceive as the lack of objective criteria to evaluate their performances. The government and public corporations should come up with a fair appraisal system and persuade the employees.”

Professor Park Ji-soon of Korea University advised the unionists to drop their unconditionally negative stance on the reform initiative. “Instead, labor should offer a more productive alternative through dialogue and compromise,” he said.

Dragging down otherwise praiseworthy government efforts is its outdated personnel management, which sends defeated politicians and retired bureaucrats to key posts of these organizations, political and economic watchers said.

No fewer than 16 such figures have quietly landed executive posts at public organizations this spring while most people’s eyes were on the parliamentary election and its aftermath, according to the Public Policy Institute for People. Most of them worked at President Park’s campaign headquarters more than three years ago or were in important posts at the ruling Saenuri Party.

“If we include those who were sent to quasi-public agencies and other similar organizations, the number of officials arriving there ‘by parachute’ will sharply increase,” said Kim Cheol, director of the institute’s research department. “Most of such people parachuted into the posts have no expertise in their new tasks.”

These unqualified officials at the top of state-run or state-subsidized institutions also explain why the shipping and shipbuilding industries have failed to get out of the troubles they are in. “As an old saying goes, a servant is only as honest as his master,” Kim said.