정리해고가 노사간 임금협상에 미치는 영향

A debate around objectives and nature of trade unions between John T. Dunlop and Arthur M. Ross in the 1940s deals with the issue, whether changes in employment may affect wage policies and bargaining styles of trade unions. John T. Dunlop assumes that changes in employment situation result in the reduced size of wage increase demanded by trade unions,because the concept of wage bill, the final goal of trade unions, consists of wage and employment. In contrast, Arthur M. Ross argues that trade unions are insensitive to employment situation and the size of wage increase demanded by trade unions and agreed by both employers and trade unions are independent to employment situation. Since layoffs had been legalized by the labor law in 1997 in Korea, it is time to investigate if layoffs affect the amount of wage increase demanded by trade unions and the agreed size of wage increase by trade unions and employers in Korea. For purpose of this study, the Establishment Panel Survey data done in 2003 and 2004 by the Korean Labor Institute(KLI) is analyzed. The empirical results show that the experience of layoffs and employers' plan to layoff in the near future do not affect the size of initial wage increase demand by trade unions and the agreed size of wage increase by both employers and unions. Also it is seen that employers' plan to layoff in the near future decrease only the size of initial wage increase demand by employers. It means that the Korean trade unions in the early 2000s are insensitive to changes in employment situation. The results implies that the perspective of Arthur M. Ross rather than that of John T. Dunlop would be more effective to explain the effects of layoffs on wage bargaining by trade unions and how changes in employment situation are viewed to employers and trade unions. However, the results above may be caused by a specific situational factor that only six years passed at the time of analysis since the layoffs had been legalized in 1997 and trade unions and employers in the year of 2003 or 2004, the year analyzed in this study, were not ready to consider the employment situation as an important factor in the process of wage bargaining.