This photo, taken on July 20, 2022, shows the Okpo shipyard of Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering Co. in Geoje, South Gyeongsang Province, southeastern South Korea. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, Aug. 26 (Korea Bizwire) — About 6 out of 10 workers at South Korean shipbuilding companies turned out to be “non-affiliated” employees of subcontractors rather than the shipbuilders that use their services, government data showed Thursday.
According to the Ministry of Employment and Labor, there were around 5.2 million regular workers hired by the nation’s 3,687 companies with more than 300 employees as of March 31.
These figures were calculated based on the companies’ public disclosures on employment.
Among the workers, 82.1 percent were “affiliated workers,” employees of the companies that use their services, while 17.9 percent were non-affiliated workers who are employed by subcontractors of different types.
The ratio of non-affiliated workers rose by 0.5 percentage points compared to a year ago, with the number of such workers estimated to have risen by 71,000.
The share of non-affiliated workers in the total workforce averaged 18.8 percent for the manufacturing industry, but for the shipbuilding industry, the ratio reached a whopping 62.3 percent.
In many cases, the employment conditions for non-affiliated workers are poor, and even if they perform similar tasks to regular workers, their pay is much lower.
In the meantime, 75.6 percent of affiliated workers were regular workers, while 24.4 percent were contract workers.
Classifying contract workers in more detail, the number of full-time contract workers stood at 852,000, while there were 199,000 short-time contract workers who work less than 40 hours a week.
J. S. Shin (js_shin@koreabizwire.com)
