“근로자협동조합”의 법적 문제

It has been one year since Framework act on Cooperatives came into effect in Korea. According to newspapers, nearly 3,000 cooperatives have been established in accordance with this act until the present. Some of these cooperatives are affiliated to the type of so called workers’cooperatives. The workers’cooperative is a cooperative self-managed by its workers. The workers' self-management of cooperatives may be exercised in a number of ways. First, a cooperative enterprise may be managed by every worker-owner participates in decision making in a democratic fashion, or second, it may be run by professional elected by every worker-owner, or third, by management and administration comprised of some worker-owners, etc. The workers’ cooperatives may be expected to contribute to the stabilization of employment and the promotion of welfare on the basis of their own intended roles. However, there are many problems to be solved in order that the workers’cooperatives can be intensively fostered as a promising business model. The first requirement is to arrange legal support systems for workers’cooperatives. In this article, some of important questions about workers’cooperatives have been treated legal-theoretically, especially from the point of labour law’s view. It is the nub of the problem whether the members of workers’ cooperative who work at their own cooperative are the worker under the positive labor laws. This paper concludes that a member-sharing workers who work at cooperative but not directly involve in the management of cooperative should be defined as the worker under both individual and collective labor relations laws.