RSSAbout 30 percent of staff at Catholic hospitals are reportedly part-time or contract positions, nearly two years after a leading bishop urged the Church to help reduce discrimination against non-regular workers.
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A laid-off worker from Kangnam |
Bishop Boniface Choi Ki-san of Incheon, president of the Korean bishops´ Committee for Justice and Peace, in February 2008 urged all employers to convert part-time and contract positions to full-time jobs.
He also asked the local Church to set an example in parishes, diocesan offices and Church institutions.
At a seminar in Seoul on Oct. 16 to review progress, the bishop said more effort was needed by Church organizations on the issue.
The practice of employing non-staff workers has become a big social problem and a hot political issue in Korea, where more than half the total 16 million workforce are said to be part-time or on contract.
While the government introduced labor laws in 2007 requiring employers to convert part-time positions to full-time jobs after two years, many employers get around the law by firing workers just before they qualify.
The new “business-friendly” government is trying to revise the law to extend the contract term to four years but has so far been prevented by opposition parties and labor unions.
Seoul archdiocese this year granted several contract workers, who had worked more than two years, full-time jobs in accordance with the law. It however did not reveal the number of its non-regular workers.
Bishop Choi´s committee does not have statistics on the number of non-regular workers in the local Church.
Teresa Lee Young-hyun, secretary of the labor union of the St. Mary´s Hospital in Seoul says overall 30 percent of workers in Church hospitals do not have a regularized position.
In September 2008, the Seoul-archdiocesan-run hospital, then known as Kangnam St. Mary´s Hospital, fired 28 non-regular workers just before they completed two-year contracts.
Last March the hospital moved to a new building with 1,200 beds, employing more staff and many non-regular workers. It now has 2,100 regular workers and 900 non-regular workers.
“The hospital seems to have no intention to reduce non-regular workers, on the contrary, it increased the numbers,” said Lee.
Other Catholic hospitals have a better record and have found that employing more full-time staff has paid off with greater productivity and efficiency.
Brother Ferdinando Yang Un-gi became director of St. Andrew´s Neuropsychiatric Hospital in 2000 and said he was shocked by the cowed appearance of many of the part-time workers.
“They were timid and lacked self-confidence compared with the full-time staff,” he said. “You could read in their faces their struggle to survive.”
He began to restructure staff, cutting high-paid jobs to make way for more full-time positions. It was more expensive at first but paid off in the long-run.
“As their working conditions improved, their service to patients improved, patients recommended our hospital and our income increased,” he said.
Father Hugo Park Jung-woo, secretary of the bishops´ committee, told UCA News every diocese and institution “has its own circumstances and we cannot compel them to follow our advice.”
He said his committee would try to reduce the number of non-regular workers in Church organizations.
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