Korean labor law » labor news

54% of companies do not disclose the amount of annual salary for job posting

Sunny Lee — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 15:29:44 +0000

According to a survey conducted by a job portal site(www.career.co.kr), more than half of companies in Korea do not disclose salary information when they post a job vacancy.

The survey conducted with 497 personnel managers in January 2009, 53.7 percent of the respondents said that they do not disclose salary level of the job at the time of job posting.

The reasons for such omission were - ’salary will be determined depending on the individual’s ability’ (51.7%), ‘less application will be made due to low salary’ (25.5%), “it is the company policy’ (14.6%), ‘to prevent practices of applying for the job only because of high salary’ (4.1%), and ‘we don’t want competitors to know our salary level’ (3.0%) respectively.

When do companies disclose the salary? Most companies do that “when a labor contract is concluded after the applicant is finally accepted’ (38.6%). Some do that at a final interview (30.3%) or at a first interview (29.2% ).

If so, how much is the salary of those companies?

The survey showed that companies not disclosing the salary information paid annual salary of 21,980,000 KRW (16,289 USD) to colleage graduates whereas those that disclose the information paid 22,500,000 KRW(16,675 USD), resulting in the gap of 520,000 KRW (385 USD).

Meanwhile, a survey of 988 job seekers conducted by the same job portal website showed that 79.7% of respondents said that the level of annual salary is what they want to know above anything else. Other answers were type of employment (66.2%), welfare (52.3%), commute hour’(28.0%), number of persons to be recruited (15.6%), sales (15.6%), and number of exectutives (9.4%) [multiple answers were allowed]

Source: Job Career

Korean labor unions getting realistic?

Sunny Lee — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 05:34:44 +0000

Almost every year, early summer in Korea has been a season of strikes and rallies by labor unions. So far, it seems like a different one this year.

Demonstration against the import of American beef that is feared by the public as likely to cause Mad Cow disesase and incessant coverage by newspapers and broadcasting over the issue moved the presence of labor unions against so-called “business-friendly” labor policies of the government out of public attention.

While the upper-level unions, especially the Korean confederation of Trade Unions, are still sticking to confrontational approaches to labor relations, the individual labor unions of companies look moving to more realistic direction.

The moves illustrating such change of direction include wage concession, strike-free declaration, and letting employers to decide on wage increase or even accepting wage freeze.

Along with a statistical trend of decreasing strikes and working days lost, these actions of labor unions may be a sign of the future when Korean labor relations will be as mature as those of advanced countries.

Yesterday’s article from Dong-A ilbo covers details of these changes.

Hyundai Motor’s case

Sunny Lee — Tue, 06 May 2008 12:12:07 +0000

While running through past news on labor issues, I found an article by Yonhap News on Hyundai Motor’s move to build overseas plants and a response from its labor union that is famous for repeated strike for the last decade or so.

Just a few sentences from the article are enough to help roughly understand what the company’s labor relations would be like.

South Korea’s top automaker, has been aggressively building overseas factories as part of its bid to shield itself from labor strikes at home.

The management should build a new plant at home to sustain job security and assuage the concerns of union members. (spoken by a labor union staff during a union-organized forum)

Union leaders clarified that they would demand the management pay higher wages, though they also seek to cut work hours to an 8-hour shift from the current 10-hour shift a day. (at the same forum)

A labor union asking management to stay and even build more plants in Korea, while demanding shorter working hours and higher wages and promising to stage strike to get what they need? I wonder whether labor unions in US or Europe also sound like this when they face their companies’ plan to move out of the country.

As Yonhap site does not provide the full-text, I copy an indirect link here.

Wage guidelines by labor and management for 2008

Sunny Lee — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 11:50:55 +0000

Every spring, around February, two labor organizations and an employers’ association in Korea announce wage increase guidelines for the year. The guidelines serve as a reference for labor unions and employers in individual companies when they come to the table for wage negotiation.

As can be expected, labor unions want higher wage increase that can more than offset inflation and living expenses and employers say that wage increase should be made in consideration of business environments and actual performance of employees.

For the last few years, a repetitious pattern emerged in the guidelines. The employers’ association (KEF) has been recommending large companies to freeze their wage every year since year 2006. Labor unions have been making separate wage demands for regular workers and non-regular workers respectively. They demanded higher wage increases (about 18%) for non-regular workers to improve their low wage level, while suggesting about half the rate of non-regular workers for regular employees (about 9%).

Regardless of those demands made by labor and management, wage increase rates for the last two years were 4.8%. Things would be easier and faster, it seems, if upper organizations narrow the gap in their proposals by having heart-to-heart discussions. Of course, it is very unlikely to happen anytime soon under the strained labor relations of Korea.

The Korea International Labor Foundation translated the major points of those guidelines. The text of the translation can be read here.