Kia Sohari production plant in Gyeonggi Province / Yonhap

By Kim Hyun-bin

The government is urging Kia Corp., Korea's second-largest automaker, to end its employment guarantees for unionized workers' children, as the collective agreement may violate a law that ensures fair employment opportunities for everyone, according to the labor ministry and industry officials, Wednesday.

According to the Ministry of Employment and Labor, the Anyang branch of the Central Regional Employment and Labor Administration sent an official letter to Kia's labor union and management earlier this month stating that Article 26, Paragraph 1 of the collective agreement may violate the fair employment law.

Paragraph 1 of the agreement says that the children who are immediate family members of an incumbent union member, who died due to an industrial accident, are given priority in hiring.

"We watched whether the labor and management of Kia would correct clause 1 in the collective bargaining process," the labor ministry said. "However, the clause remained unchanged, so we sent an official letter for a correction."

The ministry is also reviewing a corrective order to fix the relevant clause. The Trade Union and Labor Relations Adjustment Act allows the administrative authority to issue a corrective order if a collective agreement is in violation of the law.

However, in order for the ministry to issue a corrective order, it must first go through a resolution process through the Gyeonggi Regional Labor Relations Commission, which takes around three months.

The ministry said the employment guarantee through the preferential and special employment provisions violates equal rights guaranteed by Article 11 of the Constitution.

In case of non-compliance, the ministry plans to take legal action with corrective orders in the future.

The Yoon Suk-yeol administration has set the guarantee of fair employment opportunities as one of its national tasks. It was judged that the union's guaranteed hiring of their children first was a practice that could not be ignored considering the rising level of youth unemployment.

The ministry investigated 1,057 collective bargaining agreements at workplaces with 100 or more employees in August. As a result, 63 clauses that could be regarded as employment guarantees were identified with retirees and long-term employees, and 58 cases constituting job guarantees for the immediate family members of employees. Over 52 percent come from workplaces with 300 or more employees, which coincides with the fact that most unions exist in large corporations rather than SMEs.

But the automaker said the clause is not being abused rampantly.

"At Kia, there are very few examples of people being hired through this clause, since it has almost no practical application," a Hyundai Motor Group official said.

Hyundai Motor also removed the clause in 2019.