Toll collectors demonstrate for permanent position
Toll collectors protest at the Seoul Tollgate in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, Monday, to demand permanent position for themselves and 1,500 other workers at the Korea Expressway Corp. / Yonhap
By Kim Jae-heun
Forty female highway toll collectors have been staging a sit-in protest on top of the canopy of the Seoul Tollgate in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, since early Sunday morning demanding permanent positions for themselves and 1,500 other workers at the Korea Expressway Corp. (KEC)
They were among 400 former toll collectors who held a rally near the tollgate that day to protest the state-run corporation's decision to have its newly-launched subsidiary hire them instead of employing them directly.
The tollgate workers originally belonged to the corporation's outsourced service firms. However, they have been urging the KEC to hire them directly as permanent workers.
However, the corporation set up a subsidiary to hire the fee collectors.
Among some 6,500 collectors, about 5,000 accepted employment at the subsidiary, but the remaining 1,500 are refusing and demanding the KEC employ them directly.
As the contract between the KEC and the outsourced firms expired on Sunday, those who refused the new contract lost their jobs.
In 2013, the workers sued the corporation together with the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions to demand direct employment, and won in both the trial and appeal. The courts recognized the workers as de-facto employees of the KEC.
However, the case has been pending at the Supreme Court and the corporation said it would not employ the workers until the court issues a final verdict.
The workers claim that the corporation is refusing to employ them as permanent workers because it will be hard for the corporation to fire them, while it plans to expand its smart-tolling system by 2020. Under the system which calculates the toll fee and charges it later by capturing an image of the license plate, a massive number of fee collectors at tollgates across the country will be dismissed, they say.
The workers who climbed onto the roof of the tollgate say they will not come down until their demands are met. The police allowed other protesters to deliver food and portable toilets to their colleagues. At the same time, they have deployed forces to monitor the site for any possible altercations.