As the COVID-19 pandemic situation has been prolonged, Korean Air has decided to shut down for six months for 70 percent of its employees as part of its self-rescue efforts. Korean Air will virtually go into partial shutdown as 90 percent of all flights were suspended due to the COVID-19 incident.
Korean Air announced on April 7 that it will shut down the business for all employees for six months from April 16 to Oct. 15. In principle, all employees, except for the essential personnel of each department, will participate in the closure of business for employees working in Korea. It is expected that more than 70 percent of all employees will be subject to shutdown.
Korean Air's labor union also posted a message titled "Notice of Closure Due to COVID- 19" on its in-house bulletin board on the same day, saying it wants to share the pain for quick normalization of management and decided to join the shutdown.
In order to overcome the current management crisis and prevent layoffs of idle workers, the union added, "We decided to carry out closures by job category and department from April to October. We will make sure that there will be no personnel disadvantages caused by the shutdown."
Korean Air plans to pay non-duty allowances equivalent to ordinary wages to employees who go on leave after receiving support from the government for maintaining employment.
Last month, the government designated the aviation industry as a special employment support business and raised the ratio of support for employment maintenance funds to up to 90 percent of the non-duty and leave allowance.
In order to cope with the worsening business environment caused by the COVID-19 incident, Korean Air executives earlier decided to return a certain portion of the monthly salary --50 percent for vice presidents or higher, 40 percent for executive directors and 30 percent for directors-- until its management status is normalized from this month.
In addition, the company plans to come up with an enterprise-wide response system, including the sale of idle assets, including the Songhyeon-dong site, and additional capital expansion.
