유연조정교섭 메커니즘에 관한 연구:보건의료산업의 교섭사례를 중심으로

This paper analyzes the particular case of de-associated industrial collective bargaining that occurred in 2010 in Korea's health and medical industry subsequent to the dissolution of the employers association. The paper argues for a new framework for understanding industrial unionism. The new approach considers industrial unionism, especially industrial bargaining, in terms of flexibility/rigidity and coordination/incoordination and finds ample evidence of flexibility and coordination at work. The findings are at odds with the existing papers that explain industrial bargaining in terms of centralization/decentralization. Most of the research on the health and medical industry in particular follows a structural/deterministic approach, concluding that Korean unions and employers are not able to build industrial unionism due to the lack of institutional and organizational conditions - such as external labor markets and high unionization rates. Furthermore, most research ignores the possibility that industrial unionism sustains in the absence of an employers association who negotiates with an industrial union and signs an industrial collective agreement. The case under study provides ample evidence to the contrary. In 2009, employers in the health and medical industry dissolved their association, causing a pause in the industrial bargaining process,which resulted in the failure to reach a collective agreement that year. This sudden dissolution and disruption seemed to support the structural/deterministic argument that the lack of institutional and organizational conditions conductive to industrial unionism in Korea has led industrial unionism instability. In the case of the health and medical industry, most industrial relations researchers expected the immediate reversion to enterprise bargaining, after the association's dissolution, which would signal the end of industrial unionism in the field. The reality, however, was quite different. Contrary to expectations, 2010 saw effective flexible and coordinated bargaining arrangements in the health and medical industry, despite the absence of an employers association, rather than a return to decentralized bargaining between individual employers and enterprise unions. The health and medical industrial union leaders and local union representatives set up joint bargaining teams,and discussed wages and working conditions with employers. A joint team negotiated with individual counterparts, or with multi-employers representatives. Both cases produced a quite similar collective agreements for two main reasons. First, pattern setters provided a reference upon which other joint teams made their contracts with individual employers. Second, multi-employer representatives made an agreement with a groups of joint teams over a certain issues. These two types of bargaining agreements were achieved through non-centralized bargaining, accommodating the particular situations of each hospital while addressing common issues concerning the industry at large. Given this case evidence, it appears that a new framework for understanding industrial unionism and collective bargaining is called for, beyond the simple structural/deterministic and centralized/decentralized approach. The authors propose a framework that examines flexibility/ rigidity and coordination/incoordination in the bargaining mechanism. In the case under examination, unions and employers considered each hospitals' situation in the bargaining, demonstrating flexibility, which means a flexible bargaining. Also, unions and employers made collective agreements reducing the differences among their members as well as inducing collective goods, which means a coordinate bargaining. The case clearly shows that institutional and organizational conditions are not dominant factors in constructing a flexible and coordinated bargaining. While permitting a local union to negotiate with individual employers, the industrial union initiated a strategic choice to sustain its influence on decentralized bargaining. Also, employers with limited financial resources at small and mid-sized hospitals grasped benefits when joining a multi-employer bargaining rather than facing their strong local unions alone. Both union leaders and hospital employers, in addition, understood their interdependency. This led them to produce collective goods such as an agreement for non-regular workers' employment stability. The collective goods, a feature of a coordinated bargaining, were possible due to collaboration between unions and employers, not due to any single actor. Based on this case study, it can be concluded that social actor's strategic choices exercise significant influence on the process and result of collective bargaining. The case study demonstrates that it is possible for unions and employers to sustain the bargaining mechanism equated with industrial unionism under insufficient organizational and institutional conditions. Unions and employers in the health and medical industry did not return to decentralized, enterprise bargaining in 2010,but instead constructed a flexible and coordinated bargaining mechanism, which in addition called for re-establishment of an employers association in 2013. This paper recommends three areas for future research to further clarify the flexibility/coordination framework. First, researchers should use a quantitative analysis to determine the relationship between flexible bargaining contexts and outcomes. Second, researchers should pinpoint which factors lead social actors to produce collective goods in general, ad specific collective goods in particular. This paper finds that interdependency between social actors encourages collective goods in bargaining outcomes. Third, the flexibility/coordination framework should be applied to other sectors and to other countries to establish its veracity and superiority to that of centralization/decentralization when analyzing the changes in bargaining structure both in Korea and in developed countries.