POSCO Holdings (005490.KS), South Korea's leading steelmaker, has made a sweeping decision to address the chronic subcontracting structure issues in industrial workplaces.
POSCO drew up a roadmap on Wednesday to directly hire contractor employees who support operations at production sites in its Pohang and Gwangyang steelworks. Under the plan, approximately 7,000 on-site contractor workers will be converted to POSCO employees in phases.
POSCO has traditionally operated under a subcontracting structure in which in-house and contractor workers work side by side, as the steelmaking process requires round-the-clock equipment operation and involves significant variations in job functions between tasks.