노동조합의 강성 수준과 하도급 거래

This study aims to investigate how the influence of labor unions, namely the level of rigidity of labor unions, affects the use of subcontracting. Militant labor unionism and labor rigidity has long been pointed out by international organization such as the OECD and various media as a impediment to the development of the Korean economy. However, few studies have empirically verified the impact of militant labor unionism on the managerial decision-making in Korean context. In particular, labor union information in annual report has not been disclosed from 2009, empirical research examining the association between the characteristic of labor union and managerial decision making by using recently data related to Korean labor union does not exist, to our knowledge. As such, this study is the first that provides Korean evidence by using recently data on the relationship between the characteristic of labor union specifically, the power of labor unions and subcontracting which is the one of the management strategies to enhance labor flexibility. However, it is difficult to predict in advance the relationship between the power of labor union and subcontracting. For example, the outsourcing of union work and jobs either diffuses or diminishes union membership, depending on perspective and situation, thereby labor union is likely to opposed subcontracting. In this situation, we expect that there is negative association between the power of labor union and subcontracting. On the other hand, a positive relationship between labor union power and subcontracting can be observed if the labor union try to establish a reasonable labor-management relationship and agrees to improve the firm value by reducing labor costs. So our main hypothesis is whether subcontracting varies with the labor union power. To achieve the afore-mentioned research objectives, we measure the power of labor union by the Workplace Panel Survey(WPS) data developed by the Korea Labor Institute(KLI). The WPS data is the only comprehensive, multi-dimensional labor data in Korea since 2009. Our main findings can be summarized as follows. First, we find that there is a negative and significant relation between labor union power and subcontracting. Second, as we decompose total sample according to the level of labor productivity, the evidence of significantly negative association between labor union power and subcontracting is observed only from low labor productivity subsample. These results suggest that the powerful labor union tend to oppose subcontracting to maximize the utility of the union members without the attention to the interests of the various stakeholders. Our study is expected to provide clues useful for searching policy intend to undercut labor rigidity and ameliorate adverse side effects of the militant labor unionism. In sum, the regulatory authorities and enforcement bodies need to consider expanding workers' participation in managerial decision making with preparing of corporate internal system or social devices to control the abuse and misuse of the labor union's authority.