On September 27, 2016, a Seoul citizen posted a hand-written poster entitled “Okay to Be Inconvenient” at Oksu Subway Station. The poster aims to support the strikes of the labor union of a railroad and subway industry. The unknown writer says that “public bodies such as the Korean Railroad Corporation have to put a top priority on public concerns and the security of the general public not on work performance.” After this poster drew public attention on the Internet, there continued to be a relay of hand-written posters in subway stations in Seoul Metropolitan City, which shows that the implementation of a performance-based payment system on state-owned companies is a matter of public concern beyond labor-management relations. This report is in line with the poster writers regarding the performance-based wage system to public organizations and corporations because of the characteristics of public work and organizational culture of public bodies.
    First of all, public organizations play a key role in realizing public values, which competition cannot penetrate. The South Korean government articulates that the reason why it introduces the performance-based system is to boost work efficiency through fair evaluation and reward according to a result of competition. However, the public corporate bodies for public virtues do not play a role as profit-making business in the society. For example, Korea Electric Power Corporation (hereafter KEPCO) generates electrical power and supplies private bodies with a much lower price, which produces whopping deficits on its financial statements. It sounds strange to produce deficits but it happens in order to sustain society. If KEPCO asks private companies to pay as much as it costs, it affects the production cost and results in a rise in prices, which the Bank of Korea as well as the government are involved in. In this case, if the government keeps pushing KEPCO to implement the performance-based wage system, it can privatize some of their projects due to short-term performance. As a result, there will be a rise in electric rates with no quality of service guaranteed. Nonetheless, in public sectors, quality of work is far more important than quantity. Furthermore, public art industries cannot survive from the competition because they usually focus on public services based on public interests rather than on profits. Rampant merit-oriented policies are not appropriate in these fields.
    Second of all, encouragement for competition can devastate the cooperative corporate culture. The government also plans to improve labor flexibility through the merit system. Given that animated information sharing and systematic cooperation contribute to providing quick and efficient public services, teamwork is crucial in public companies. For instance, when the government conducts audits and inspections of governmental offices, information sharing is really essential. Without systematic cooperation, the public bodies cannot meet their due date to hand in relevant documents. Yet under the name of a merit system, it encourages individuals to cultivate a self-centered organizational climate, which undermines cooperation. Because the performance evaluation is to make a ranking system among colleagues so that it turns into a zero-sum game: If one gains, the other loses. In other words, teamwork created by correcting errors one another make and sharing work knowhow can be to no avail in the frame of the performance-oriented system. Furthermore, this performance-based system puts aside the role of labor unions in public corporations but puts emphasis on the individual ability. It means that this system can split workers separately and can be abused as an effective control tool over the workers, which creates the confrontation between the labor and the management. Under this environment, the work efficiency cannot be driven.
    Some people insist that the performance-based wage system can reform the incompetent public sectors and degraded quality of public service and fix up prevalent moral hazards in public bodies. Here, however, lies a question, if the wage system really works to improve the situation. First, the incapability and corruption of the public sectors also originate from high-ranking officers appointed from above. Rather, this power abuse is the essence of the inefficiency of public organizations. Thus it is nonsense to drive general workers into competition without solving this chronic social problem. In addition, there is no evidence that the wage system can improve the quality of public services but rather creates a possibility to deteriorate them by privatization. Finally, as for reforming moral hazards, since it is difficult to quantify work performance appropriately, the result of evaluation depends on personal opinions. It means that it would be hard to expect impartial appraisals, producing the likelihood to benefit the evaluators’ pet. Furthermore, considering that Microsoft and GM Daewoo abandoned this performance-based system after having implemented it for years due to its negative effects such as undermining work efficiency and its competitive edge in markets, the Korean government has to scrutinize the negative effects of the system and take careful action.
    The Korean society is already suffering from the excessive merit system. From elementary school to society, the race never stops. According to OCED statistics, Korea takes the second place in the average annual working hours per capita, following Mexico and meaning that Korean workers annually work two months more than those of the average OCED member nations. This means that the introduction of the performance-based payment system implements hyper competition in the already ultra-competitive society. At least the government should reconsider the meaning of “performance.” Public values are not measurable in numbers and it is intangible to evaluate dispersed individual workers across the nation. Moreover, the merit-oriented system can bring about individualism in public bodies where cooperation is the key element in the working process. Therefore, it is high time that the government discusses the genuine incentives of the quality of life and happiness of the nation. Another problem of the current introduction of the performance-based system is ‘hasty’. The Korean government has not had enough discussion over this issue with citizens. Later is always better than never. It is not too late if the Korean society adopts the performance-based system after enough discussion. Rather, considering that workers in public organizations and corporations are involved in public services, the ways to inspire patriotism and a sense of mission can encourage their working motivation. As a Korean citizen, every individual lives as a patriot and feels pride in working in public organizations or public corporations. The high quality of public services cannot help coming from the people with patriotism.
 

By Lee Bo-ram, Second-year Graduate Student, Major of Fine Arts Education,
Graduate School of Education, Chonnam National University