By Kwon Mee-yoo
Staff reporter
KBS, the nation's largest broadcaster, said it will trim about one fifth of its executives and staff by 2014 in what is seen as the biggest rationalization program in its 84-year history.
It will make as many as 1,100 executives and employees redundant, reducing the number of workers to 4,400 from 5,500. Its union is strongly opposed the restructuring plan.
Mindful of the opposition, KBS said the planned rationalization program is moderate, considering that some 800 people will retire naturally by 2013. The remaining 300 will be trimmed by merging similar positions or transferring other minor jobs to affiliated companies.
"The cuts are at the level of natural downsizing and the role of the public broadcaster will not be harmed by the move," Ahn Hee-goo, a senior KBS representative, told reporters. "We will not carry out any artificial reduction of manpower."
KBS also said it will decide later this month how much it will raise monthly fees charged to TV viewers. "We are going to report detailed plans in regard to the increase of the fees to the board by the end of the month," the representative said.
The reform plan calls for the reorganization of departments and headquarters into those more focused on customer needs.
To that extent, the Audience Relations Center will be upgraded to the Audience Relations Division, a move the broadcaster says will help embody the value of monthly television fees all viewers pay.
They will recruit employees as an integrated broadcasting group - this is currently divided into reporters and producers.
"In the long term, we will cut down the cost of labor to less than 30 percent from the current 37 percent," the official said.
KBS sought a report from the Boston Consulting Group to come up with the reform plan.
However, the KBS union and the KBS headquarters of the National Union of Mediaworkers (NUMW) both opposed the plan.
The union said it would stop any reform plan that had not been discussed with it. "The company's restructuring plan is totally unacceptable and practically impossible," a union member said.
A group of KBS employees, who quit the old union last year when a strike was voted down, established the station's branch of the NUMW in December 2009 and it was elevated to the headquarters of the NUMW in January.
The new union also raised objections to the management's plan. "We basically oppose the reorganization and the layoffs are not acceptable at all," an official for the new KBS union said.