Employment Relations in South Korea

Evidence from Workplace Panel Surveys

K. Bae

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781349491339
  9781137428066
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137428080
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Human Resource Management
• Index: Business

Employment Relations in South Korea provides readers with an overarching view of Korean employment relations and insight into recent changes, and also to help the general public understand more easily the various phenomena and changes in Korean employment relations.

Part I

Introduction

1

About the Study

Kiu Sik Bae*

Work and labor provide people with not only the means to make a living but also a sense of belonging, identity, dignity, and social recognition. Next to the time we spend sleeping, work takes up the most time in our lives. Work (labor) therefore is a very large and significant aspect of our lives and of society. Unfortunately, despite the significance of work, Korean society often seems to pay more attention to the outcomes and the perceived influence of work than to the actual reality of the work people face in daily life.

Unlike the self-employed, employees involved in orthodox employment relations essentially agree to engage in a subordinate contractual relationship in which wages mediate the use of the individual employee by other people. Within employment relations, workers are compelled by economics to engage in work according to the plans and instructions of management. Employment is therefore not just a simple economic contractual relationship whereby labor is sold by workers and bought by management; it also involves political relationships whereby one party wields power over the other. Employment relations also encompass diverse, individual, and collective social relationships – among workers, between workers and managers, and between workers and board level management – that may be determined on the basis of such factors as employment type, region, skill level, job position, occupation, ethnicity, age, and gender. These relations also have an almost psychological contractual aspect whereby labor and management share expectations of employment security, trust, and motivation. This study seeks to accurately depict and to understand the big picture of employment relations and the nature and characteristics of these relations in South Korea as of the latter half decade of 2000. In doing so, this book, takes a multidisciplinary approach, and uses various methods to examine employment relations from a range of perspectives.

Since 1987, there has been an abundance of academic discussion and commentary on Korean employment relations.¹ However, these discussions and arguments have been based less on systematic research of actual circumstances than on a partial analysis of facts pertaining only to specific aspects or issues of employment relations. Such partial examination has been used as the basis for various estimations and frequently for very broad interpretations. In fact, very little data exist, for systematic research on major aspects of employment relations that could be used to examine the overall state of Korean employment relations, and there have been almost no research opportunities to actually obtain such data. In addition, very few studies that looked at overall changes and trends in employment relations in Korea examined the background and reasons for such changes (Kim, 1996).

Benchmarking the experiences of the UK, Germany, Australia, and Canada, who regularly conduct very systematic surveys on workplace employment relations, the Korea Labor Institute (KLI) combined the various workplace surveys that had hitherto been conducted in a scattered fashion, according to the needs of individual studies on employment relations or related policy tasks, into a more comprehensive survey in the form of the Workplace Panel Survey (WPS). This survey has been conducted every other year since 2005. The results of the WPS are made available for use to the general public, and WPS conferences are held to encourage researchers to present research outcomes related to specific topics or issues related to the WPS. As the organization responsible for conducting the WPS and generating WPS data, the KLI was expected to compile WPS results into comprehensive reports (similar to the comprehensive reports on workplace employment relations published in the UK)² on the overall state of and changes to employment relations in Korea each time the WPS results were released to the public. Because of a lack of consensus within the KLI regarding the need for these comprehensive reports and a dearth of researchers able to fulfill the task, this expectation was not previously met.

WPS data have been generated with considerable financial support from the Korean government in the form of budgetary and labor inputs. This study seeks to use these data to examine systematically the overall state and various aspects of employment relations in Korean workplaces and to identify major changes to Korean employment relations between 2005 and 2009. The aim in doing so is to present the bigger picture of employment relations in Korea and to discuss the nature of employment relations and its meaning. The scholars who have contributed to this report are long-standing experts in their respective fields of study. They have all worked to provide both objective accounts of employment relations based on their interpretation of the WPS results and comparisons with previously confirmed facts and findings of existing studies.

Chapter 2 looks at the characteristics of workplaces and the workers in them sampled in the WPS. In Part II, the study moves on, in Chapter 3, to examine individual employment relations in terms of recruitment, evaluation, termination, and layoffs and then, in Chapter 4, looks at wages in terms of the wage structure, performance-based pay, wage levels, and wage increases. Chapter 5 analyzes the structure and use of corporate welfare systems linked to employment relations in individual firms. Chapter 6 focuses on relatively abundant WPS data on the highly controversial issue of the non-regular labor market and industrial relations involving non-regular workers. It analyzes why and how workplaces use non-regular workers and what problems are inherent in non-regular work.

Part III, Chapter 7, looks at collective industrial relations, where collective bargaining, including bargaining on wages, and labor disputes are examined through analyses of their structure and processes, as well as by looking at the content and results of collective bargaining. Labor disputes are also examined in the context of the structure and processes of collective bargaining. Chapter 8 analyzes union density, types, leadership, and organizing activities, together with corresponding coverage of collective bargaining and the nature of industrial relations. As for industrial relations in non-unionized workplaces, of which a large proportion are Small and Medium Enterprises (hereafter SMEs), Chapter 9 looks at labor-management councils (CLMCs) and their establishment, their actual operations, their role and functions, employee participation in management through them, and processes for handling complaints.

Part IV focuses on work organizations. Chapter 10 looks at education and training and the issue of skills through an analysis of survey results on skill levels, interest in skills development, current education and training programs, and related infrastructure. Chapter 11, on workplace innovation and the work process, provides an overview of the current status of work organization. It takes a deeper look into work organization in the manufacturing sector and its development, including management innovation within the workplace and the degree of innovation as measured by the work system innovation index. Chapter 12 examines the issue of long working hours through such filters as the application of the 40-hour working week, overtime, the proportion of workers with long working hours, shift work, the inclusive wage system, working time flexibility, and the validity of related regulations.

The main purpose of this study is to provide scholars of employment relations with an overarching view of Korean employment relations and an insight into recent changes. The study also aims to help the general public to understand better the various phenomena and changes in Korean employment relations. To this end, contributors have focused on presenting their findings in a manner that is easily accessible to the general public; for example, by using tables and graphs that are easy to follow instead of in-depth and complex quantitative analyses of specific topics or issues within the realm of employment relations.

In the past, various studies that used WPS data to research similar topics have been presented at WPS conferences and have provided information and time-series analysis on various aspects of employment relations. WPS survey results so far have not, however, been fully utilized in their entirety; they have been used only in part by interested scholars.

It is our hope that this report’s overview of various phenomena and changes in Korean employment relations on the basis of WPS results will serve as a major milestone in our quest to explain Korean employment relations in the second half of the 2000s. We also dare to hope that this study of the characteristics of Korean employment relations in terms of individual employment relations, collective industrial relations, and work organizations can be used as an important baseline for future research.

To ensure consistency in style, format, focus, and contents among the different chapters of this study, the experts in employment relations who contributed to it met on numerous occasions to plan and select subtopics, to review progress and first drafts, and to conduct a final check. Nevertheless, we recognize that in terms of the structure, perspective, and format, this report does not have the consistency of one written collaboratively by a few selected authors. Each chapter inevitably reflects the style and individual focus and perspective of its author. While some of this study’s limitations and errors may stem from errors in WPS data, we acknowledge that most of them should be attributed to the editor who planned this report or to the limitations inherent in any report produced by so many contributors dealing with such a multitude of topics. The contributors to this report wish no more than for this study to serve as a springboard for further in-depth research on the various phenomena and changes in Korean employment relations. A future editor will probably work to correct any errors and limitations discovered in this report in the next comprehensive report to be written on the results of WPS 2011 and WPS 2013. We pledge our utmost efforts to provide even better insights into and analysis of the overall status of and changes in Korean employment relations through similar reports on each future set of biennial WPS results.

Notes

* Senior Research Fellow, Director for Industrial Relation and Social Policies Research Department, Korea Labor Institute.

1.The term “employment relations” is used to refer to both individual employment relations and collective industrial relations.

2.From 1983 to 2006, the UK published five comprehensive reports on employment relations in the workplace. Survey results for 1980 are compiled in W. W. Daniel and N. Millward, Workplace Industrial Relations in Britain: The DE/PSI/ESRC Survey (London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1983); 1984 results are compiled in N. Millward and M. Stephens, British Workplace Industrial Relations 1980–1984: The DE/ESRC/ PSI/ ACAS Surveys (Aldershot: Gower, 1986); 1990 results are compiled in N. Millward, M. Stephens, S. Smart, and W. R. Hawes, Workplace Industrial Relations in Transition: The E...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Part I  Introduction
• Part II  The Management of Employment Relations
• Part III  Collective Industrial Relations
• Part IV  Work Organization
• Part V  Summary and Conclusion
• References
• Index