NoSaJung Focuses on Job Creation

On December 26, the NoSaJung committee had their 29th official meeting at their offices in Jong Ro, Seoul. As their 2004 core agenda, they chose job creation and agreed to move forward on contracting social entente.

NoSaJung’s affiliated economic agency has talked about solutions to unemployment problems in the past. However, this is the first time where government, labor and management all participated in adopting the unemployment problem as the official agenda.

The committee decided to discuss specific programs and methods at the commercial affairs meeting early next year.

The NoSaJung committee said that the unemployment problem cannot be ignored anymore, due to the fact that there are more than 400,000 out-of-work youth, and the number of employed decreased this year by 37,000, resulting in a low employment rate of 59.7 percent.

NoSaJung’s chairman, Kim Kum Soo, hoped for better by saying, “Labor and management working together to create new jobs follows social agreement on damage-compensation action and the provisional seizure issue. This is a turning point from confrontational labor-management policies to united cooperative relationships.”

Kim Chang Sung from the Korea Manager Association commented, “This is the time when labor and management should put their heads together to create jobs.”

Lee Nam Soon, chairman of the Korea Labor Committee, stressed that, “We agree with the NoSaJung committee’s overall premise, however it cannot include a wage-freeze or cut, flexibalization of employment or other similar action as its basis.”

Nevertheless, until NoSaJung comes to a final decision about a specific plan for job creation, affiliation is expected. This is because the labor world feels that new jobs should be made without affecting the original ones while employers feel that a flexible labor market is a must.

The NoSaJung committee has decided to postpone the date for discussing a roadmap for labor-management legal policy moving forward, from the end of this year to the first half of next year.

Following this, the government, respecting the labor-management opinion, decided to go ahead with legislation on the roadmap as soon as possible after the opening of 17th National Assembly next year.

On the other side, NoBalChu presented a final report about the introduction of an industrial classification and regional classification consultation policy where NoSaJung consults on pending problems involving industrial and regional classification in order to boost domestic competitiveness and improve the work environment.

NoBalChu also stressed the need for flexibility in personnel management by changing service classes and pay policies into an ability based system.

Ho-Gab Lee gdt@donga.com