독일의 사업장 차원에서의 공동결정 제도와 시사점

German ‘Works Council’, which is made up of representatives of workers in accordance with the ‘Workplace Organization Act’, has considerable co-determination powers over collective working conditions and general personnel policies. It has the authority to obtain practical information and consult with regard to management matters, and has means to adjust interests in advance and to compensate for disadvantages in business changes such as mergers, that have a significant impact on the interests of workers. The German Works Council serves as a system that protects the rights of workers and guarantees the participation and autonomy of workers in the scope of supplementing collective agreements of trade unions. The protection and autonomy of workers in Korea are centered around the ‘Collective Bargaining system’ based on the labor’s three fundamental rights under the Constitution. Particularly in the case of small and medium-sized enterprises, the organization rate of the labor union is very low, revealing problems with its representativeness and effectiveness. In this situation, the ‘Labor-Management Council’ can be an alternative to perform a practical task to complement the collective bargaining system. To do so, there must be an organization with representatives of workers first. In other words, in order to make binding decisions on working conditions etc., a separate ‘Labor Representative Organization’, which is composed of worker representatives, not an equal number of labor-management committees, should be organized. And, the workers’ representatives should have the authority over information acquisition, consultation, agreement, and objection depending on the matters. In short term, it is desirable to secure the representativeness of workers by clearly defining the democratic method of election of labor members of the Labor-Management Council, and to have a ‘Workers Committee’ composed of such labor members to take on a certain role. And, it is necessary to define clearly the effectiveness of resolution of the council, then to ensure that the council make a resolution on matters agreed between labor and management.