The Seoul National University(SNU) is found to have done a number of illicit behaviors in relation to the use of contingent workers. The SNU was put under fire again this year at the parliamentary audit in two consecutive years, as the SNU did not convert most of the fixed-term employees whose employment contracts exceeded two years into the open-ended employment contract status.
According to Rep. Yoo Eun-hye of the opposition Minju Party of Korea in the Education, Culture, Sports and Tourism Committee of the National Assembly, 235 fixed-term employees excluding the teaching assistants were supposed to be converted into the employment contract without a fixed-term. As these employees worked for more than two years, they should be considered as the employees with no fixed-term employment contract pursuant to the Act on the Protection of Fixed-term and Part-time Employees.
However, only 32 out of 235 fixed-term employees with more than 2 years of service made open-ended full-time employees which is 13.6% of the employment contract conversion rate. 102 employees quit the job and 101 employees are still working as the fixed-term employees.
The problem lies in that the violation of the law by the SNU is not the first time. It was raised at the parliamentary audit last year and the SNU did not rectify the problem. According to the parliamentary audit last year, the open-ended employment contract conversion rate was 39% in 2012, 34% in 2013, 29% in 2014.
Last year it further fell to 13.6%. The outcome of declined conversion rates seemed to have been affected by the instruction made in October 2010. The SNU in principle banned the conversion of the fixed-term employees (into the open-ended employment contract) when the employment contracts expire, taking into account the increasing financial burden on the university.
Rep. Yoo criticized the SNU that although the conversion rates kept on declining, the SNU made a false report that it has completed the conversion of all fixed-term employees who were eligible, excluding the employees exempted from the Act.
This year a new issue of non-student teaching assistants was raised. The SNU apparently plans to terminate the employment contracts of 78 non-student teaching assistants who had worked for 5 to 7 years, which is against the administration interpretation by the Ministry of Employment and Labor, the decision of the labor relations commission and court cases on the application scope of the Act.
The SNU has another problem of indirect employment. Rep. Park Kyung-mi of the Minju Party of Korea in the Education, Culture, Sports and Tourism Committee unveiled the indirect employment situation at the national universities. According to Rep. Park, 6 universities including the SNU out of 12 national universities outsourced the tasks of machine and electricity facility management as of August 24 this year.
The number of employees in indirect employment is the highest at the SNU(148), followed by Chungnam National University(63), Chonbuk National University(18), Korea National Open University(17), Incheon National University(13) and Busan National University(5).
Moreover, the situation reveals that the subcontracting companies submitted the daily work progress report to the facility support section of the SNU and the SNU staff directly instructed the work to the subcontracting companies through the e-mails. Rep. Park said, "As the tasks of machine and electricity facility management is relatively easy to work, the jobs were usually filled with the direct employment at most of other national universities. However, the SNU insists on the indirect employment to avoid the liability for the workers."
The Korean University Workers Union held a press briefing in front of the National Assembly to call on the SNU to expand the conversion rate of the fixed-term employees into the open-ended full-time employment contract and to guarantee the employment of teaching assistants.
reported by Kim Hak-tae
edited in English by Kim Sun-jin