한국의 단체교섭 구조 = COLLECTIVE BARGAINING STRUCTURE IN KOREA

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

There have been common trends towards increased decentralization in the formal structure of collective bargaining in nearly all countries since the 1980s. The collective bargaining structure in Korea, however, point to the opposite direction. Unlike most European countries, enterprise unions were dominant form of trade unions in Korea, and its bargaining structure was extremely fragmented at the enterprise-level. It was because the revised labor laws in late 1980 reorganized industry-based unions into enterprise unions. The Asian financial crisis, however, has brought about a sea of changes in the industrial relations model. The organization of industrial unions has gained momentum in Korea since the financial crisis. The Ministry of Labor estimated that 618,356 workers which accounted for about 40 percent of organized workers now belong to industrial or regional trade unions (MOL, 2008). Currently, the collective bargaining at the three major industrial unions, i.e., the Korean Metal Workers Union, the Korean Financial Industry Union, and the Korean Health and Medical Workers Union, takes place at the industry-level.
Reasons for the Centralization of Collective Bargaining
The two most important forces that are causing the centralization of collective bargaining in Korea are (1) the changed legal framework of industrial relations, and (2) worsening employment instability after the financial crisis. As the subsequent amendments of labor laws since the democratic transition in 1987 eliminated authoritarian labor codes, the present Act on Labor Unions and labor Relations Adjustments no longer prohibits trade unions from organizing at the industry-level. The impact of the financial crisis on the labor market also facilitated the centralization of collective bargaining structure. Since the Asian financial crisis of 1997 caused an economic downturn in Korea, the labor market has suffered from high unemployment and a worsening employment structure. As a result, union leaders and rank-and-file members soon realized that the enterprise union system could not adequately protect their own employment security, let alone represent the interests of all workers. Therefore, the Korean industrial relations system began to demonstrate tendencies towards centralization, such as the organization drive at the industry level.
Research Methods
The previous research on collective bargaining structure in Korea mostly relied on the statistics provided by the government or the two national labor federations. In this study, I used the Korea Labor Institute(KLI)’s Workplace Panel Survey(WPS) 2006 in order to explore diverse dimensions of Korean collective bargaining structure. The population of the WPS includes workplaces with 30 or more employees, and the sample consists of a total of 1,905 workplaces. A total of 36,066 weighted workplace data were used in the analysis.
Results
1. The collective bargaining structure in Korea was significantly different across sectors. Those sectors with more unionized workplaces were more rapidly transformed into industry unions. About 25 percent of workplaces in the manufacturing sector with 21 percent of union density were covered by industry-wide or region-wide bargaining, while 43.8 percent of workplaces in the transport sector with 87.2 percent of union density were covered by the multi-employer bargaining.
2. Even if the collective bargaining takes place at the industry-level, the local branches do not necessarily follow the instructions of the industrial unions. Only 60 percent of local union representatives answered that they would take them into consideration. Actually, in many sectoral agreements leave wage determination to the enterprise or workplace level in Korea.
3. The probability of multi-employer bargaining tends to increase with size of workplaces, but its impact was minimal. Foreign ownership is negatively related to multi-employer bargaining, and it is more like

목차 (Table of Contents)

• Ⅰ. 서론
• Ⅱ. 단체교섭구조의 일반적 특징
• Ⅲ. 산별교섭의 실태
• Ⅳ. 단체교섭구조의 효과: 초기업교섭과 기업별 교섭의 비교
• Ⅴ. 결론 및 향후 전망
• 참고문헌
• [Abstract]