Employers Divided on Non-Regular Workers Law
By Kim Tong-hyung
Staff Reporter
The business community is divided over the stalled bills on non-regular workers.
Big businesses argue that employers should be given full say over whether to give full worker status to non-regular workers. Small businesses want to keep a two-year period at the end of which employers have to decide to fire non-regular workers or hire them on a permanent basis, as long as there are government incentives. Small businesses hire more non-regular workers than big businesses.
Political parties, including the ruling Grand National Party (GNP), tried to come up with related bills but failed to reach an agreement by the June 30 deadline, leaving companies to decide whether to shed the temporary workers or put them on the regular payroll.
In a statement released Wednesday, the Federation of Korean Industries (FKI), a major business lobby, claimed that opposition parties and labor groups should take the blame should a large number of non-regular employees be ``pushed out to the streets.''
The short-term fate of these precarious workers isn't the main concern for FKI, which had been calling for the elimination of any restrictions on the hiring period of contingent workers, allowing companies greater freedom to replace their workforce with cheap and flexible labor.
``The current law is fundamentally flawed in the fact that it forces companies to fire workers after a certain period, even when the workers have clear intentions of keeping their job,'' said FKI in a statement.
``To correct this contradiction, the limit on the hiring period of contingent workers should be abolished, or at least the workers should have the freedom to keep their status in agreement with the management.''
FKI's stance, which is shared by other business lobbies such as Korea Employers Federation (KEF) and the Korea Federation of Small and Medium Business, differs from that of GNP. Aside from suggesting a two-year moratorium, the GNP is also calling for the government to provide financial support to companies converting their contingent workers to full-time status.
``Granting financial aid to companies, which is the GNP's idea to gain political agreement on the two-year moratorium, will only make the situation worse,'' said a KEF spokesman.
``The current problems over contingent workers, and the consequences of the contingent workers' law, originates from the rigidity of the market for regular workers. The discussions need to be made on a larger scale, which includes reforming the market for regular workers, instead of just talking about restrictions on the hiring periods for non-regular workers.''
The debate over the contingent workers' law has certainly brought an unusual role reversal, with business representatives talking extensively about the worries of mass layoffs, while labor groups downplay the concerns.
With an additional 370,000 workers completing their two years after July, government officials claim that the number of laid off workers could be between 700,000 and 1 million.
Labor groups claim that the government is exaggerating the worries. They insist that the number of non-regular workers completing their two years by July will be from around 350,000 to 380,000. Companies are already freely cutting or hiring non-regular workers, or in some cases, converting them to regular status, business decisions that aren't tied to whatever happens after July 1.
And since low-paid and precarious jobs like those of cleaning workers, security guards, supermarket cashiers and telemarketing workers, those who do get laid off will not have much trouble finding a new job due to the flexibility of those jobs markets, labor officials say.