A court has ruled that social workers employed by local governments to provide care services to seniors are not converted to indefinite-term employees even if they worked for more than two years.
The 1st Panel of the Seoul Administrative Court (Presiding Judge Yang Sang-yoon, Director General judge) said on Apr. 10 that it ruled in favor of the plaintiff in a suit filed by Local Government A seeking to overturn a retrial remedy decision on unfair dismissal and unfair labor practices against the Chairperson of the Central Labor Relations Commission, it said on the 7th.
Local Government A is implementing the "customized senior care service project," which provides protective measures such as home-visit nursing, care services and safety checks for seniors living alone under the Welfare of Senior Citizens Act. Five people, including a person surnamed B, were social workers who were hired through an open recruitment by Local Government A and carried out the customized senior care service project.
Local Government A outsourced this project to a private company starting in Jan. 2024, and all employment contracts with B and others ended at the end of 2023. B and the others then applied for relief to the regional labor relations commission, saying their length of service made them indefinite-term employees after two years and that the end of their contracts was an unfair dismissal.
Under the Act on the Protection, Etc., of Fixed-Term and Part-Time Employees, if a worker continues to work for more than two years, the worker is deemed an indefinite-term or regular employee. The regional labor relations commission found unfair dismissal on that basis, and the Central Labor Relations Commission likewise deemed it unfair dismissal in its retrial decision. Local Government A then filed an administrative suit in protest.
The Seoul Administrative Court ruled that the retrial decision by the Central Labor Relations Commission, which found that B and others had been converted to indefinite-term employees of Local Government A, was unlawful, and therefore it was not an unfair dismissal. It viewed that Local Government A hired them anew each year through open recruitment, forming a new employment relationship each time.
The panel also said, "This project is carried out by Local Government A with financial support from the national and provincial budgets, and the open recruitment notice states that 'employment conditions, including the period of employment, may be adjusted according to guidelines from higher-level agencies and budget changes,'" adding, "B and others would have recognized that continued employment would be impossible if the project were halted due to changes in national policy."