Over 100,000 temps turn regular workers under Moon

SEJONG -- More than 100,000 temporary jobs in the public sector have been converted into regular jobs during the Moon Jae-in administration, whose term expires Monday midnight, state data showed.

According to Alio, a system for publicizing management information of 370 public agencies, 101,720 nonregular jobs were converted into regular jobs between May 2017 and May 2022. The outgoing president had pledged to have “zero irregular jobs” in state-funded agencies.

The new permanent positions accounted for some 24.5 percent of the total payroll in the public sector.

Alio showed that the tally for regular workers at the 370 state-funded agencies increased by 28.4 percent from 322,934 at the end of 2017 to 414,524 at the end of 2021.

Over the corresponding period, the tally for nonregular workers declined by 57.7 percent from 134,623 to 56,964.

By year, the number of converted jobs reached 9,786 in 2017, 36,643 in 2018, 34,348 in 2019, 18,522 in 2020 and 2,421 in 2021.

The number of temporary workers rehired as regular workers by each agency was subject to a government evaluation of their performance.

The Korea Electric Power Corp. topped the list as it converted 8,259 nonregular jobs into permanent positions, followed by the Incheon International Airport Corp. with 7,894. The Korea Electric Power Corp. had established three subsidiary units which helped drive up numbers.

Among next on the list were the Korea Expressway Corp. at 7,563, the Korea Railroad Corp. at 6,230, the Korea Airports Corp. at 4,162, the Korea Racing Authority at 3,341 and Kangwon Land at 3,299.

Meaningful numbers were also seen at the Korea Land & Housing Corp. at 2,952, the Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power at 2,312 and the Industrial Bank of Korea at 2,145.

Including the list above, the number of agencies, which saw 1,000 or more conversions over the past five years came to 18. In contrast, 25 of the 370 agencies did not convert even one temporary position.

Moon’s zero temporary job policy instigated conflict between labor and management, and among employees who were hired as regular workers at the public agencies in the first place after a series of hiring processes and exams.

Some jobseekers have raised the issue of fairness in the hiring process in the public sector.

By Kim Yon-se (kys@heraldcorp.com)