Hanwha Group to give permanent job status to 2,000 temps

Hanwha Group will turn more than 2,000 of its non-regular workers into regular employees. This is the first measure from Korea`s top 10 largest conglomerates since President-elect Park Geun-hye urged large companies to share the burden and help achieve co-prosperity. Whether Hanwha`s action will spread in the broader business community is fueling speculation.

Hanwha on Sunday said it will convert 2,043 non-regular workers to employed full-time at its affiliates into regular staff from March 1.

Hanwha Hotel & Resort will convert the largest number of non-regular employees, 725, into permanent workers. Second will be Hanwha General Insurance with 533, Hanwha 63 City with 209, and Hanwha Galleria with 166. Hanwha Life Insurance, Hanwha Chemical and Hanwha Corp. will also have 10 to more than 90 non-regular members made permanent. Female workers will account for 1,200 of the new permanent posts, or about 60 percent of the workers set to benefit from the conversion.

Affiliates will review the number of non-regular employees to be converted and finalize the final figure. If all of the workers are made permanent, the portion of non-regular workers at the conglomerate will decline from 17 percent to 10.4 percent.

President-elect Park pledged as a priority to have non-regular workers in the public sector made into regular staff by 2015, and will spread the conversion program to the private sector. The goal is to eventually lower the portion of non-regular works in Korea from 33.8 percent as of August last year to about 10 percent. Since the president-elect urged conglomerates to refrain from implementing corporate restructuring and laying off workers, certain financial companies have raced to lead the conversion of non-regular employees into regular ones.

Hanwha’s decision will likely influence many other conglomerates or established companies. Ahn Jong-hyeon, head of the employment welfare team at the Federation of Korean Industries, said, “Other companies will now have no choice but to seriously consider the non-regular staff issue.” But critics warned of negative effects if the conversion campaign ends up being a one-time event meant to show off. Lee Seung-yoon, a management professor at Hongik University, said, “If the reduction of non-regular workers ends up as a one-time event rather than continuously implemented, it could dampen public trust in companies and fuel uncertainty in the job market.”

drake007@donga.com