After Shinhan Card sharply increased remote assignments in its regular personnel reshuffle for the second half of this year, the labor union is pushing back, calling it an "indirect restructuring." Shinhan Card said it was an unavoidable choice to streamline the organization.
According to the financial sector on the 16th, a total of 119 employees were assigned to remote locations unrelated to their home base in Shinhan Card's second-half regular personnel reshuffle. That is 6.6 times more than the 18 remote assignments in the second half of last year. Under Shinhan Card's internal rules, if the straight-line distance between cities is 40 kilometers or more, it is considered a remote location. With this reshuffle, there were also cases where staff who had worked in the greater Seoul area were placed in major regional hubs such as Busan, Daegu, and Gwangju.
On this, the labor union said, "We submitted personal circumstances such as illness or family care, but they were not reflected at all in the reshuffle."
Since the 8th, the union has been staging a sit-in in front of the CEO's office at Shinhan Card's headquarters on Eulji-ro in Seoul. The union has labeled the second-half regular personnel reshuffle as "indirect restructuring" and is demanding a full withdrawal from parent company Shinhan Financial Group and Shinhan Card CEO Park Chang-hoon.
Shinhan Card said it was "an unavoidable development that arose in the process of making operations more efficient," and regarding the increase in the number of remote assignments this time, said, "As we integrated around major regional hubs to prevent financial accidents, the number inevitably increased." With this integration, the number of Shinhan Card branches decreased from 30 to 20.
After the reshuffle on the 1st, Shinhan Card is proceeding with procedures to provide accommodations for those assigned to remote locations. A Shinhan Card official said, "We are arranging separate accommodations such as hotels in addition to officetels," and added, "By early August, we expect to supply accommodations to all employees assigned to regional posts."