Court Rules in Favor of Contract Workers
By Park Si-soo
Staff Reporter
The Supreme Court ruled a business must grant permanent worker status to contract workers who are dispatched to another company if they work for the company for more than two years, quashing an appellate court's decision.
The 14-penal court demanded Thursday a gas retailing company rehire its two dispatched workers as permanent.
The ruling is significant as the nation's highest court concluded that dispatched workers must be given permanent worker status once they work at a company for more than two years.
Current labor law stipulates dispatched and temporary workers employed for two years at the same company must be treated the same as permanent workers. But the law has been vague about the rehiring of workers dispatched to other workplaces. The vagueness has frequently led to business-dispatched worker disputes over the past years.
The two workers were dispatched to the company in April 2000 via a job brokerage agencies. They worked there for two years. They kept the position for a further one year and seven months after changing agency. The workers were hired at the company again as temporary staff when their contract with the agency expired. They maintained their position until October 2005, which means they worked at the same firm for five years and seven months in total.
Although the two worked at the gas company for more than two years, the firm refused to give permanent worker status to them, alleging they had changed their agency every two years.
In response, they filed against the National Labor Relations Commission in 2005, alleging they were illegally fired.
In the ruling, the court stated ``They changed their brokerage agency every two years. But their workplace has never changed so that their employment relationships with the firm continued for five years and seven months, which means the two petitioners must be given permanent worker status.''