"Job Seekers Sensitive..." 청 Explanation That Added Fuel to the Anger of People in Their 20s

Hwang Deok-sun, Senior Secretary for Jobs at the Blue House Photo by Yonhap News

[Asia Economy Reporter Son Sun-hee] As Incheon International Airport Corporation's policy to convert temporary workers to regular employees, known as the so-called 'In-guk-gong Incident,' sparked outrage among job seekers in their 20s, the Blue House hastily stepped in to calm the situation. However, by showing no empathy toward the concerns about 'fairness' raised by these young job seekers, public anger seems to be spreading instead.

Hwang Deok-soon, the Blue House Chief of Job Policy overseeing employment policies, said in a radio interview on the 25th, "Since this involves converting the jobs of those already working into regular positions, it is unrelated to the job opportunities for those currently preparing to join the corporation," adding, "About half of the approximately 1,900 people being converted this time will have to go through an open recruitment process." He also emphasized that this policy is not new but was already agreed upon between labor and management in December 2017 as a direct employment target.

Chief Hwang further attributed the anger over the 'In-guk-gong Incident' to "the fundamental cause being youth unemployment," stating, "Job seekers may be a bit sensitive because the job market is tough," which muddled the issue. Such remarks have been criticized for failing to empathize with the anger of 20-something job seekers who have not even been able to enter non-regular jobs and for misidentifying the root cause.

According to the corporation's announcement, the number of directly employed workers this time totals 2,143 non-regular workers in life- and safety-related fields such as airport firefighting, wildlife control, and passenger security screening. This far exceeds the existing number of 1,486 regular full-time employees (as of Q1 2020). Because of this, there are expectations that the newly converted regular employees will hold union bargaining rights in the future and reduce wage gaps with existing regular employees.

Moreover, compared to the previous recruitment process, which recorded competition rates of hundreds to one, many opinions hold that even if certain procedures are followed in this regularization process, it cannot guarantee 'fairness in the hiring process.'

Furthermore, due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, Incheon Airport Corporation is expected to record a deficit of 320 billion KRW this year. Considering various management conditions, concerns are fully justified that the door to new recruitment will become even narrower after this regularization.

In this regard, a Blue House petition titled "Stop the Regularization of Non-Regular Workers in Public Enterprises" surpassed the response threshold of 200,000 signatures within just one day of being posted, and as of 10:50 a.m. today, it has gained about 225,000 supporters.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.