Retail giant E-mart’s decision to convert 10,000 temporary workers into permanent staff may be the best news that the labor market has heard in years. And it shows how much difference one president can make for so many workers.
The move by the nation’s largest discount chain came right after the labor ministry ruled that the retailer hired and used 1,978 workers dispatched by a referral agency in illegal ways, and threatened to impose fines of 10 million won per worker each month until it rectifies the irregularity.
This is the same labor ministry which looked the other way when the same company oppressed unionists over the past five years under a different President. The conversion is a belated but welcome move but the government’s auditors should investigate allegations that the ministry also knew but ignored the unlawful hiring practices for years.
Also noticeable is that the Shinsegae Group came up with the decision following a similar one taken by Hanwha Group, another family-controlled conglomerate. The two chaebol groups have one thing in common: their owners have either been convicted or are under police probes for financial and labor-related violations. Few Koreans doubt that the tycoons’ troubles are related with President Park Geun-hye’s strong policy to tame chaebol.
We hope President Park will continue to keep her pledge not to allow any exception from fair and equal enforcement of the law. She should not follow in the footsteps of her predecessors, most of whom started with anti-chaebol policies but ended up compromising with the corporate behemoths, which together account for more than half of Korea’s gross domestic product. If only she can make the industrial giants faithfully abide by the law, numerous smaller firms will breathe far more easily.
E-mart’s latest move will incur additional labor cost of 60 billion won a year, or 7.7 percent of its net profits of 776 billion won, while raising its employees’ annual income by 27 percent. This is a worthy investment because the workers are certain to repay with corresponding productivity growth and improved work discipline.
Corporate use of temporary workers and dispatched labor is a universal trend to meet with rapidly changing industrial climate. So the new government’s task is to narrow the excessive income gap between temporary and permanent workers here and tighten the restrictions of this irregular employment practice by drawling a clearer line between acts that are allowable and those that are not.
The ongoing change in the domestic employment market is a move in the right direction, but is only a small beginning toward realizing President Park’s promise to make a ``happy Korea.”
