Public institutions here have often come under criticism for employing relatives of their employees. This practice is not to be necessarily blamed as long as the process and standards of recruitment are fair, objective and transparent.
But recent data released by a lawmaker suggested that favoritism remained widespread at public organizations, permitting jobs to be virtually passed down from parents to children. The National Agricultural Cooperative Federation and the National Federation of Fisheries Cooperatives have hired hundreds of children of employees and former employees in recent years, according to the data.
Personnel managers at the institutions insisted that the recruitment followed established procedures and no privileges had been offered to employees’ sons and daughters. Their claim, however, is hardly persuasive, given that most parents of successful applicants are or were senior post-holders with possible influence over the hiring process.
This hereditary transmission of envied jobs frustrates and angers young jobless people, whose number has exceeded 350,000. This practice severely harms the principle of giving everyone equal opportunities to compete for jobs.
With economic and social polarization deepening in Korean society, it has become increasingly difficult ― nearly impossible, some say ― for people to move up to a higher class. The gap between starting points for youths entering society has continued to widen, depending on their parents’ wealth and status.
This trend should not be left unaddressed, if our society is to maintain coherence and stability. Among things needed to prevent the consolidation of social structure is to ensure fairness and objectivity in recruitment, particularly for decent jobs.
Giving privileges to employees’ children is unacceptable especially in public institutions, which are obliged to offer more cast-iron guarantees for fairness in hiring workers than private companies. The need for them to uphold fair hiring standards has increased as many large private businesses are reducing the number of new jobs amid a prolonged economic downturn.
It is absurd for labor and management at public organizations to conclude deals that guarantee preferential treatment for relatives of employees and ex-employees. Public outcry erupted last year over the revelation that 60 percent of the 30 institutions affiliated with the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning had such labor-management contracts.
In February, the government introduced a set of measures to eliminate job inheritance at public organizations. Institutions whose labor and management have agreed to give privileges to employees’ children are subject to various disadvantages.
A small number of institutions have since deleted the clause on hereditary job transmission. But many remain unaffected. A report submitted by the Ministry of Employment and Labor to a legislator this month showed that 35 public organizations still had labor-management deals that allowed employees’ children to be given preferential treatment in recruitment.
Methods used to hire employees’ relatives include giving them additional marks in entrance examinations or recruiting them as irregular workers before giving them regular status. These practices, which have no legal basis, are simply unacceptable and must be discarded. It should be noted that a local court last year ruled against a carmaker’s labor-management deal on giving priority to employees’ relatives in recruitment as “contrary to social justice and common sense.”
Hereditary employment has usually led to other distortions in personnel management such as promotions and job assignments, hampering the efficiency and productivity of an organization. Tougher measures should be taken to eradicate this extreme form of favoritism. Chief executives who neglect to ensure fair recruitment should be put to stricter discipline, including dismissal.
Lawmakers should pay more attention to this issue. They should be quick to pass a bill aimed at barring public institutions from distorting hiring standards, which has stalled at a parliamentary committee since June.
