[Exclusive] National Tax Service Improves Treatment for Time-Selective Hiring Civil Servants with 'Permanent Civil Complaints' Since 2022

[Asia Economy Reporter Oh Juyoun] The National Tax Service (NTS) has decided to accept demands to expand the working hours of time-selective recruitment public officials starting next year. Accordingly, time-selective public officials who previously worked only 20 hours per week will be able to extend their working hours up to 35 hours per week according to the revised Public Officials Appointment Decree of June 2019. Additionally, department assignments will be made as much as possible under the same standards as full-time public officials. This move is notable as it accepts long-standing criticism that, despite being the same public officials, time-selective public officials were only assigned to handle civil complaints simply because they were appointed under the time-selective system.

On the 29th, according to the 'Plan to Expand Working Hours for Time-Selective Recruitment Public Officials (Draft)' submitted by the office of Kim Doo-kwan, a member of the Democratic Party of Korea, to the NTS, the NTS announced that it will expand working hours for time-selective public officials to allow them to work 7 hours per day (35 hours per week) upon their own application. The implementation date is set from January 2022.

Furthermore, personnel transfers will be operated under the same standards without discrimination against full-time employees. The NTS stated, "Those working 7 hours per day will be assigned to other fields besides the civil service office, just like full-time employees."

Time-selective recruitment public officials, first introduced in 2014, are public officials who work shorter hours than the usual working hours of public officials (40 hours per week). Currently, about 110 such officials are handling civil affairs at tax offices under the NTS. At the time of introduction, the working hours for time-selective public officials were set at around 20 hours per week, but with the revision of the Public Officials Appointment Decree in June 2019, it was expanded up to 35 hours per week. Although there was an opportunity to extend working hours upon personal application, demands for expanding working hours by time-selective public officials working at the NTS and the Korea Customs Service had repeatedly been rejected. They expressed unfairness, stating that although they were appointed through a competitive recruitment process under the National Public Officials Act just like full-time public officials, they were excluded from choices such as working hours expansion and department transfers.

Kim Hwang-woo, Secretary-General of the Time-Selective Headquarters of the Public Officials Union, said in a phone interview with Asia Economy, "Until now, demands to expand working hours for time-selective public officials were not accepted due to limited quotas." He also pointed out, "Full-time public officials have opportunities to build personal careers through department transfers every 2-3 years, but time-selective public officials are assigned only to specific simple tasks because they work 4 hours a day. The law clearly states that there should be no discrimination in promotion or transfer, but this was not well observed." He emphasized, "At the very least, we want no discrimination between time-selective and full-time public officials as stipulated by law."

While the NTS has belatedly decided to improve this, the Korea Customs Service showed a difference by attaching conditional implementation. Regarding the manpower operation plan for time-selective public officials, the Korea Customs Service stated, "Considering comprehensively the impact of promotion backlog of full-time Grade 9 public officials and the demand for expanding working hours of time-selective recruitment public officials, we plan to gradually implement the expansion of working hours starting from 2022."