Suspicions over “Promotion Deal”

The Ministry of Labor (MOL) is suspected of having been behind the scenes in dealing with the “labor union of civil servants of MOL” over granting the status of civil servants to counselors working for JobCenter.

The ministry has worked for a measure to give 1,567 counselors of JobCenter the status of public servants under the direction of President Roh Moo-hyun since last April.

However, the labor union opposed such measure, saying that the center can be more effectively run by the private sector.

The labor union is said to be worried about a birth of another labor union and possible disadvantages of the existing low level public officials with the rising number of junior public servants.

The Korean Government Employees’ Union posted the results of the consultation with the MOL over this issue on its website on March 30.

The notice said that when the labor union tried to put a newspaper advertisement on problems related to the issue on March 21, MOL officials including the minister called the executive department to ask for a delay in the posting of the advertisement and proposed a consultation on March 20.

The executive department demanded several things in the two meetings with the minister of labor and five meetings with senior officials of the labor union over five days: promptly promoting civil servants below the 6th class; upgrading the rank of public servants of the 7th class who are already supposed to receive a promotion; eliminating disadvantageous regulations over personnel management guidelines; improving performance evaluation by institutions, which causes competition and increased workload; and having representatives of civil servants below the 6th class participate in the committee of the union.

According to this report, on March 26 the labor union decided not to put the advertisement with the promise from the minister that all the demands will be taken into consideration.

Then, the executive department posted a report saying that “all 60 civil servants who were candidates for promotion will receive one within April, and another 30 will be promoted in the second half of this year”, and in fact the MOL did promote 140 including 63 public servants of the 8th class on April 12.

Against this backdrop, suspicions have been raised that the MOL accepted the demands of the labor union on the conditions of not posting the advertisement.

Roh Min-ki, secretary of policy planning, said, “We did oppose putting the advertisement, but the promotion was already planned and had nothing to do with the advertisement. The legislation that was aimed at converting the status of the counselors to civil servants was passed in the National Assembly on March 27.”

ditto@donga.com