Seoul metropolitan government announced on August 11 that it has completed the 'Seoul Labor Policy Innovation Measures', after studying a total of 1,100 workers' interviews and experts' opinions.
According to the innovation measures, Seoul metropolitan government will limit the use of fixed-term or contract workers. Currently the national legal provision of the related Act is only regulating the duration of contract, when the contract workers are hired.
Since the prevailing practice of the fixed-term employment is believed to contribute to the worsening social polarization, Seoul metropolitan government takes measures to bring changes to the fixed-term employment practice by restricting a list of reasons that the employers must justify the use of contract workers.
Seoul metropolitan government established a plan to control the total number of contract workers hired by the Seoul city invested or funded institutions and Seoul city commissioned contractor enterprises.
In order to do so, Seoul city invested or funded institutions will decrease the fixed-term employment rate from the current 5% to 3% by 2018, while the commissioned contractor enterprises wil reduce the rate from the current 14% to 10% by 2018.
Seoul metropolitan government will work out a guideline for the use of contract workers by September this year under three overarching principles of 'short-term, exceptional and minimum' use of fixed-term employment.
Seoul metropolitan government is currently driving the regularization of contract workers. It plans to change 7,296 contract workers to full-time regular workers by end of this year. So far 7,023 workers(96.3%) are benefited from the city government's policy initiative.
☞ click the news below for more details in Korean