직장괴롭힘과 경영․인사관리의 한계: 노동 인격에 대한 존중

The problem of workplace bullying does not only lead to the deterioration of labor productivity; on a higher level, bullying at work infringes on the dignity of the workers’ labor. Therefore, it is a problem that should not be ignored. As public concern about this issue has risen, various types of research have been conducted, and there is now the systematization of detailed categories of workplace bullying. One such category is “abusive HRM(human resources management)” where supervisors exert emotional or mental pressure on workers. Unlike more obvious forms of aggression, such as harassment, insults, defamation, and physical assault, abusive HRM is sometimes difficult to acknowledge as a form of bullying, as it appears on the surface as the employer’s exercise of a reasonable level of authority over the affairs of the personnel. Acts of abusive HRM include: frequently excluding the worker from his or her duties without a reasonable explanation; ordering the worker to repeatedly perform unnecessary tasks; and giving non-work-related orders to personnel in the workplace. These conditions make individual victims feel humiliated and fearful, and cause the entire workforce to internalize a sense of fear and become insensitive to irrationality. This leads to the workers’ collective and voluntary obedience to their employer. To regulate forms of abusive HRM, first, it is imperative to define what it is. In reference to the general definition of workplace bullying, in this paper I define abusive HRM as: “overall acts, performed by a person or persons either abusing their job position inside or outside the workplace, or through the superiority of the majority, whereby a physical or psychological assault is conducted consciously, continuously, and repeatedly towards a specific worker or workers’ group, or where a specific worker or workers’ group is alienated.”As one of them, “abusive HRM is using the means of authority over personnel with the purpose of organization or management.” A problem with regulating abusive HRM is that an employer sometimes insists that the unreasonable practices are part of his or her reasonable exercise of authority over the personnel, and that the employer is thus acting within the right of management. However, the right of management and its substantiality are ambiguous, and it may be questioned whether or not this right includes authority over not only the material facilities of the workplace but also the human resources. Thus, the authority over personnel is the liability in the labor contract between an employer and employee. When the employer abuses his or her authority over personnel, and it becomes a case of abusive HRM, there is no necessity to demonstrate the malice of the employer. Creating special legislation to prevent workplace bullying, including abusive HRM, might be the most effective solution to the problem, since not only workers, but also job seekers under the recruitment process and workers in the special occupational category should be protected from workplace bullying. However, in order to draft this legislation, there needs to be extensive societal dialogue, which consumes time and resources. Thus, it might be a better option to supplement the current legislation that prevents bullying at work, by adding an additional chapter on harassment to the existing Labor Standards Act, thus dealing with both sexual harassment and workplace bullying together in the same law. Another option could be to escalate the word “assault” to “violence” in Article 8 of the Labor Standards Act, which would prohibit more types of unreasonable actions. To prevent the incidents of workplace bullying occurring right now, I also suggest re-interpreting the application of the current Article 26, “the right of suspension of work” in the current Occupational Safety and Health Act.