South Korea's business community said Monday that labor reform to establish a "fair" and "flexible" employment market cannot be delayed further in order to create jobs for future generations and ensure sustainable economic growth.
  

The demand comes as long-stalled negotiations will likely resume after the Federation of Korean Trade Unions recently decided to resume dialogue with the government and management on labor market reforms.
  

"Labor reform to create a fair and flexible labor market is the cause of this era that cannot be delayed further," the country's five major business lobby groups said in a statement.
  

"Without the reform, we cannot expect sustainable growth of the national economy and jobs for our next generations. Under the inflexible labor market like this, it is not easy to expand investment and employment."
  

The business organizations, including the Federation of Korean Industries and the Korea Employers' Federation, also called for the revision of labor-related regulations deemed to be unfair and inflexible, which discourage businesses from generating more jobs.

Among other things, the lobbies cited rules that make it difficult to fire workers and a salary system under which employees' pay rises according to their seniority.  
  

Such inflexible employment and pay systems discourage businesses from hiring workers on a regular contract basis and eventually hurt younger people desperate to land jobs after graduation, they claimed.
  

"Current systems, such as the strict regulations related to firing workers, guaranteed employment regardless of ability and performance, and an automatic rise in pay according to seniority, increases the burden of overprotecting workers with vested rights," they said.
  

"And this makes businesses more reluctant to hire regular workers, and it ends up lowering the chances for unemployed youth and irregular workers to land better work. They are the prime victims of such an inflexible labor market," they added.
  

The lobby groups went on to say that it should be seen as "reasonable" to push for a pay system change that does not end up lowering the overall amount of salaries or introducing a wage peak system, calling for the government to provide necessary policy support in that regard.
  

A wage peak system allows employees to accept a reduced salary in exchange for working until the retirement age set by the company.
  

The government is pushing to introduce it at state-run enterprises, while encouraging the private sector to follow suit as part of efforts to provide more working opportunities for younger people. But the labor community is objecting at what it sees as a "unilateral" move to force it to adopt the new pay and employment system.
  

The business lobby groups urged the labor organizations to take the lead to adopt the wage peak system, while promising to double down on its efforts to ease the "employment cliff" confronting many younger people, should the pay system change without a problem.  (Yonhap)