Abolition of Legal Provisions Discriminating Against Part-Time Public Officials

Abolition of Legal Provision Displaying Time-Selected Public Officials in Decimal Units on Staffing Quotas from September 1

[Asia Economy Reporter Jong-il Park] The National Part-Time Public Officials Labor Union (Chairperson Seong-hye Jeong ·photo) announced on the 1st that the legal provision calculating part-time public officials in decimal units and reflecting them in the quota will be abolished.

In the early days of the introduction of the part-time public official recruitment system in 2013, aiming to achieve a 70% employment rate, two part-time public officials were hired for one full-time public official quota, arranged in pairs of two, which caused discontinuity in work and rigidity in duties.

To improve this, in 2016, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety revised the "General Rules on the Organization and Quota of Administrative Agencies" with the reason of "promoting the utilization of the part-time public official system and enabling flexible personnel management to respond to diverse work demands," stating that "the quota for part-time public officials shall be calculated based on the total weekly working hours, with one person per 40 hours, and reflected in the quota; if the total weekly working hours are less than 40 hours, it may be calculated in decimal units and reflected in the quota." This separated the quotas for part-time and full-time public officials and allowed operation in decimal units.

Kim Hwang-woo, Secretary General of the Part-Time Public Officials Labor Union, argued, "According to the Standard Korean Language Dictionary by the National Institute of the Korean Language, a quota is defined as 'members with proper qualifications,' but even after the decimal provision was abolished, as long as the clause stating 'the quota for part-time public officials shall be calculated based on the total weekly working hours, with one person per 40 hours, and reflected in the quota' remains, part-time public officials cannot be recognized as one person. Therefore, the task of revising the law to calculate them as one person regardless of working hours still remains."

To improve this, Democratic Party lawmaker Lee Hae-sik (Gangdong-gu Eul) proposed amendments on December 16 last year to the National Public Officials Act, and on April 6 this year to the Government Organization Act and Local Public Officials Act, to revise them to "the number of public officials belonging to each agency by type and rank is expressed as an integer at the agency level."

Seong-hye Jeong, Chairperson of the Part-Time Public Officials Labor Union, stated, "With the introduction of the decimal quota concept by law enforcement, problems have continuously occurred such as part-time public officials not properly receiving work equipment like computers and desks provided based on the quota, exclusion from promotion due to the absence of higher ranks in the separated part-time public official quota, and ambiguity about how many quotas exist per rank. As a result of requesting the Ministry of the Interior and Safety and the National Assembly to integrate the separated quotas caused by the decimal calculation provision, the decimal provision was abolished and implemented as of September 1. However, since this is a half-hearted amendment, discriminatory elements still remain, and urgent revision is needed."

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