‘Hanwha move complies with Park’s rules’

Kim Seung-youn
Hanwha Group Chairman

A member of President-elect Park Geun-hye’s transition team Sunday welcomed Hanwha Group’s move to put about 2,000 “temporary” workers on regular payroll as part of efforts to improve job security and access to employment benefits.

“The Hanwha move complies with the President-elect’s principle,” the member said, adding that the issue was not taken up for discussion yet and indicating that it might be discussed.

The group is the first to make a conversion promise of such a large scale among the top 10 conglomerates.

Market insiders believe the Hanwha move is an effort to win the favor of the incoming government, which has emphasized the role of conglomerates in job creation.

It also drew immediate attention as it came at a very sensitive time when the group chairman was recently granted parole on grounds of poor health following his four years conviction for embezzlement.

A total of 2,043 workers on temporary contract who have worked for a long time will be granted permanent status from March 1, according to the group’s officials.

They are from the group’s affiliates including Hanwha Hotels & Resorts, Hanwha General Insurance, Hanwha 63 City and Hanwha Galleria.

“The decision came as an effort to enhance the job security of our employees on temporary contracts and also reflect our growing corporate social responsibility,” a Hanwha official said. “We will change the tradition to recruit contracted workers and instead will hire more permanent workers to replace them and decrease the ratio of people on temporary payrolls.”

The large-scale conversion of workers’ job status will allow the group to reduce the ratio of contracted employees to 10.4 percent. In comparison, the ratio of contracted workers in Korea stood at 33.8 percent with the average of OECD member countries at 25 percent.

According to city government figures, more than half of temporary workers work less than a year and are paid less than half of what permanent workers earn. Less than half of them receive benefits such as a pension, health insurance and overtime pay.

But the Hanwha official denied that the decision is an effort to curry favor with the president-elect Park Geun-hye.

It can be safely assumed that the Hanwha move aims at saving its Chairman Kim Seung-youn from a further jail term. Kim has spent his time in a cell since August when a Seoul district court sentenced him to prison and a fine of 510 billion won after finding him guilty of embezzling billions of won from his company. He was granted a temporary parole until March 7 after he lost consciousness and failed to appear at an appeal hearing early this month.

In fact, the group’s decision is in line with president-elect Park’s election pledges on jobs and employment.

Park has emphasized the welfare of the underprivileged including temporary workers and also charged big firms to take part in creating more jobs.

At a recent meeting with business executives she was quoted as saying, “Big firms have grown through the backing of the government and sacrifice of the people so I think that they should in a way be seen as people’s companies.” <The Korea Times/Chung Min-uk, Kim Tae-jong>