On June 23rd, a petition questioning the equality of Incheon International Airport Corp.’s plan to turn 1,902 contract and part-time security officers into regular employees was posted on the Presidential office website. The petition reads “Job seekers and current regular workers have studied and struggled to build up resumes to apply for this coveted workplace. Incheon airport is a coveted workplace which is notoriously hard to get into. Applicants for office positions have near-perfect scores in English proficiency tests. This plan takes away the opportunities from these people who have just been doing their best to earn their status. It is a reverse discrimination and a misfortune for the young people who have been working diligently.” This online petition ended on July 23rd with 352,226 signatures.

Incheon airport’s big plan of converting nearly two-thousand workers into regular employees was a first step to President Moon Jae-in Administration’s “Zero Non-regular Worker Initiative”. Moon claimed “Chances will be equal, the process will be fair, results will be just”, in the inaugural address, promising a better employment era for young people. On May 12th of 2017, the fourth day after the inauguration, Moon visited Incheon Airport as one of his first public appearances as President, and confirmed that nearly 10,000 contract, part-time and dispatched workers would be converted into regular employees during this administration.

Of the total 9,735 workers to be converted, workers in three areas related to health and safety, including the airport fire brigade (211), wildlife control (30), and security (1,902), will be hired directly by the airport operator, while the remaining 7,642 workers, consisting of airport operation (2423), airport facilities and systems (3490), and security expense (1729) personnel, would join the airport’s three affiliate companies as full-time employees. What is shocking is that the number of workers who are subject to the transition overwhelms the number of former full-time employees. Among these former irregular workers, there is an exception for those hired after May 12, 2017, because they are judged to have been aware of the transition policy. They will be hired through open recruitment. Problems arise here, too. If some 800 employees fail in the open recruitment process, they will form additional opposition.

Incheon airport is facing harsh backlash from many: the young people outraged to the reverse discrimination, topped by the nation’s worst employment crisis. Plus, the labor union’s claim that the government should come up with new measures to satisfy all workers, as it is causing conflicts and divides public opinion due to the arbitrary decisions the government made, not to mention the future waste of tremendous amounts of taxpayers’ money. But is there any way that everyone can be satisfied?

The goal of this policy was to turn non-regular workers, who have relatively poor working conditions, into regular employees, who are promised a stable and good working environment. But there is an absolute error here: why should the plan to provide irregular workers a good job occur in the direction of a unilateral transition to full-time employment, shaking up the existing employees’ system itself, rather than trying to iron out the mentioned troublesome elements? If the treatment of non-regular workers is poor and there is a problem with the working environment, appropriate measures to correct these problems should be fixed, and if there is a seemingly generous treatment full-time employees receive, it should be reconsidered and adjusted to an appropriate level.

Moreover, the main argument of the petition that the conversion plan is reverse discrimination cannot be explained without an erroneous concept toward millions of jobs that exist. The premise of thinking that it is unfair for those with “no” effort to become full-time workers is based on a distorted perception of certain labor. For those who agree with the petition, it is unfair for security agents to be offered a full-time job because they had not been through the open recruitment that requires higher knowledge and education. This logic puts all jobs that require expertise, not knowledge, into the sub-regions of the white-collar class.

The Incheon Airport Corp.’s conversion plan was bound to face backlash due to its lack of consideration for the aftermath. It was a sudden policy under the direction of President Moon’s Administration, not a policy set through deep reflection over the process of gaining employment, the treatment and wages of all workers, and controversy over equity etc. There seems to be a need for discussions on such tests and practices that mainly considers academic backgrounds, and the treatment of non-regular workers. Policies for the part-time, non-regular workers should not be blind to such a drastic aftermath, but with regards to the practical environment they face. Narrowing the preposterous wage gap between non-regular and regular workers, ensuring that they are not discriminated against in terms of economic compensation, and taking the flexibility and expertise of the sentry workers as an advantage should proceed. Before all this however, the old perception that regular workers are superior to non-regular workers in all aspects of employment should change. In this era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, in which job diversification is expanding, our perception level toward employment should advance from past practices.

Han Seunghyeon  seunghan7019@naver.com

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