OSAN AIR BASE, South Korea — The U.S. Air Force in South Korea will cut more than 100 Korean civilians from its work force this week at Osan Air Base and Kunsan Air Base, the U.S. military command in Seoul said Friday.
The U.S. 7th Air Force has also clamped a freeze on hiring South Korean civilians and will “minimize” overtime and premium pay to South Korean employees, according to a U.S. Forces Korea news release issued Friday evening.
Most of the 112 employees who will see their employment end Friday — 75 at Osan and 37 at Kunsan — work at base public works jobs such as building maintenance, road repair, plumbing and electrical work, South Korean labor union and U.S. Air Force officials said.
Many of the jobs are seasonal “overhire” slots of a kind related to a specific task, officials said.
The 7th Air Force is the senior U.S. Air Force command in South Korea, headquartered at Osan.
“Although these personnel are not mission-essential, we will certainly miss them,” said Air Force Maj. Wesley Miller, Osan spokesman.
The actions come only weeks after USFK said it would look to cut costs because the South Korean government was not providing enough money to pay for the stationing of U.S. forces in Korea.
“This is because of funding reductions, so it’s a money shortage issue,” Miller said. South Korean union leaders “are being kept informed” of actions taken by 7th Air Force officials, Friday’s USFK release stated.
The 112 employees have received termination notices, said Kim Keun-myung, vice president of the Korean Employee Union’s Songtan chapter. Osan Air Base is in Songtan, a section of Pyongtaek City.
“Some Korean employees at those positions have been working for more than 10 years,” Kim said.
On April 1, USFK chief of staff Lt. Gen. Charles C. Campbell held a news conference in Seoul and said the command might cut 1,000 Korean jobs from its payroll over the next two years, cancel 20 percent of existing contracts with local Korean firms, and cut spending on military equipment and services.
Under terms of the military alliance between South Korea and the United States, South Korea shares the cost of keeping U.S. forces on the peninsula.
Late last month, U.S. and South Korean officials initialed a two-year agreement that requires the South Koreans to pay about $680 million annually, about a 9 percent drop from last year’s $741 million payment.
The United States has called on South Korea to boost its contribution and make it more in keeping with what other nations pay toward stationing of U.S. troops. Japan, for example, pays about 75 percent of U.S. military costs there.
But South Korean officials have said they want their costs frozen or cut this year. They cite U.S. plans to gradually cut its Korea troop strength by a third. And South Korea has said it should pay less because of other contributions it makes, including the 3,600 troops it has deployed in Iraq.
Thousands of South Korean employees who work on U.S. bases gathered across the peninsula on May 12 to protest any proposed job cuts. Another protest, in which union employees from across Korea will gather in Seoul for a mass rally, is scheduled for June 3.
The union has also hired lawyers and is going to submit paperwork to the South Korean government seeking to strike.
Hwang Hae-rym contributed to this report.
