INCHEON – Incheon Airport has been praised for its excellent service, chosen as the world’s No. 1 airport for 12 years in a row.

Beneath the fancy title, however, the airport has long been viewed by local labor experts as a microcosm of the country’s sharply-polarized labor market: Nearly 85 percent of the workforce here are “irregular workers” on an average salary that is less than half that of the “regular workers.”

Precisely for that reason, President Moon Jae-in chose it as the place to start his bold and controversial campaign for “zero irregular workers” in the public sector. Visiting it on May 12, just two days after taking office, the liberal leader promised to make 10,000 outsourced workers full-time employees, declaring the labor market polarization as a major obstacle to economic growth.

Three weeks after the presidential visit, the initial joy has mostly subsided.

Instead, some practical issues, many of them unforeseen, have emerged, as the related authorities, labor groups and experts discuss how to implement the change.

Oh Sun-ok is among 6,831 irregular workers hired by 46 outsourced firms contracted to offer services in cleaning, safety checks, traffic control and maintenance, among other things.

The 60-year-old cleaning staff who has worked at the airport for 11 years told The Korea Herald that she wants to continue working until she retires. In most public firms, employees with permanent employment status are subject to forced retirement at age 60.

“I have been just too exhausted. As the number of passengers using the airport doubled, so did my workload,” said Oh, who works from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m., six times a week.

“But I did not complain because I could not afford to be fired. I have children to support at home. And I cannot get another job at this age” she said.

Workers like Oh are an integral part of the airport’s operation, passenger service and even its vigilance against terror. The airport is even outsourcing such functions as bomb disposal and security checks. In order to renew their contracts, service providers -- most of them small companies -- compete on price, resulting in low pay and poor working conditions for their employees.

Guaranteeing workers job security and better work conditions should be seen as an investment to enhance the airport’s overall operation and management, claimed Shin Chul, policy director at the airport branch of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions.

“Workers themselves should have a say in the discussion process, because our employment status is linked to the safety of passengers,” he stressed.

“The airport has taken advantage of our experience and know-how, but did not properly reward us for our contribution.”

The airport operator’s CEO Chung Il-young has created a task force to map out a plan to give irregular workers permanent jobs and promised to get it done by the end of this year. He is to meet with representatives of labor unions at the airport as well as those not organized.

“We are going to draw up a plan in mid-June and push for the plan starting in August or September,” said an official at the Incheon International Airport Corp.

But there appears to be a long way ahead for both the airport and labor unions to reach an agreement on what kind of regular workers they can be and how it can be funded.

One of the most likely scenarios is to set up an affiliate to hire all the regular workers at the airport.

That idea, however, is not without criticism. “Establishing a separate body would only result in creating low-quality regular jobs and justify discrimination against the second-class regular workers at the airport,” said professor Kim Sung-hee at Institute of Labor Studies at Korea University.

Whichever approach it takes, the airport will likely be the touchstone of whether the era of “zero” irregular jobs is possible during the Moon presidency.

On the back of Moon’s pledge, there are already a flood of demands among irregular workers for a regular status in the public sector. From teaching assistants at universities and nurse’s aides to mailmen and cleaners, they demanded regular status for themselves, too, in public statements or through a strike in recent weeks.

Some state-run firms, including Industrial Bank of Korea, NH Nonghyup Bank, Korea Land & Housing Corp., Korea Technology Finance Corp. and Korea Asset Management Corp., have joined the drive by creating a task force to remove irregular jobs.

A total of 118,763 people, or 36.2 percent of the workers hired by the nation’s 332 public firms, are non-regular or outsourced workers, according to data from the Ministry of Strategy and Finance.

“Companies have created irregular jobs because it was considered more efficient to outsource tasks and hire workers through recruitment agencies,” said professor Kim. “That way, they cut back on labor costs and didn’t have to take responsibility for workers’ rights or working conditions.”

Park Hye-young, a labor attorney, said that the jobs do not have to be divided into regular or non-regular ones as long as the principle of the same payment for the same work can be established.

“The discussion should go beyond solving the problem of irregular workers,” she said. “It won’t matter anymore if salary and benefits are the same for the same work regardless of their job types.”

But there are also concerns that Moon’s push for rooting out irregular jobs in the public sector could increase the financial burden on taxpayers and a reduction of job openings.

“A profitable public firm like Incheon Airport can keep afloat for a few years. But if all irregular workers are uniformly turned into regular ones, there is a possibility that they cannot recruit any new regular employees and turn to taxpayers’ money,” said Sung Tae-yoon, an economics professor at Yonsei University.

Also, questions arise over whether it is “fair” to grant the same status and entitlement to irregular workers as regular workers.

“I think it is unfair to give permanent job status to all the irregular workers without any specific screening process,” said a 27-year-old banker, who studied for a few years to get into a state-run bank. “Also, given my experience, there are people who want to work part-time or only for a short time. Some positions don’t need full-time employees.”

By Ock Hyun-ju (laeticia.ock@heraldcorp.com)