근로자의 경영참여를 위한 노사협의회의 한계와 개선방안

Business operations or activities are essentially subject to employers’ decision making and the management shall be responsible for the results by decision making. The Korean Constitution guarantees the order of capitalistic market economy on the basis of the respect on economic freedom and creativity of individuals which are implemented by freedom to exercise of property rights and freedom of occupation. In other words, employers have the freedom to manage, change or dispose the businesses or sales they select. The management rights of those employers, the freedom of decision making in management, are the substantive rights secured by Clause 1, Article 119, Korean Constitution on economic order, Clause 1, Article 23 on securing property rights and Article 15 on freedom of occupation. The concept of employees’ participation in management can’t be uniformly defined, but has the narrow meaning on the aspect that it is related mainly to the employees’ participation in their companies. Employees’ participation means that employees participate in the decision making process of an enterprise and participation means certain influence on decision making. Accordingly, employees’ participation in management means in a broader sense that labor and management jointly manage businesses to protect and improve their own profits as representative of workers while management right was considered as the employers’ authorities in the past. An enterprise can basically and effectively maximize its business goals when the management and the employees or the labor union cooperate each other. Thus, it means that the right to speak on the business management which was considered as the exclusive rights of management to employees and so employees share the rights and responsibilities in management share with employers as participating in the business management for strengthening labor and management and improving productivity. More specifically, employees’ participation in management means that employees or labor union participate in the matters related to each business management in some form. This paper defines the labor-management council system as the employees’ participation in management and aims to examine the system. However, the labor-management council in Korea doesn’t properly perform its functions as the organization for employees’ participation. With respect to this, a variety of approaches has been discussed for improving the labor-management council system in Korea. However, the limit in the discussion on the method to improve labor and management relationship including the method to improve labor-management council system is to excessively focus on the discussion around legal system. While the legal system is important in terms that it provides the fundamental framework for finally summarizing improvement method and politically implementing it, the labor-management system is not a kind of system to be controlled by legal system. Moreover, the property of labor-management relationship is not changed by improvement of legal system. The labor-management relationship is about the relationship between two acting subjects and can’t be improved or changed if the confidence issue between two subjects is not solved. Accordingly, the labor-management council system implemented in Korea at present depends on the support from the state government with the neutral attitude in terms of the confidence enhancement between labor and management before legal and institutional improvement. If the confidence issue between labor and management can be solved only by labor-management council system at present, employees’ participation in management, protection of rights and improvement of labor conditions can be substantially implemented and accordingly, the labor-management relationship in a work place can be safely secured. In the long term, the settlement of stable labor and management relationship in an enterprise will contribute on the improvement of productivity of each enterprise. To this end, it is required to accurately define the difference between labor union and labor-management council. The potential loss of opportunity cost caused by the existence of overlapped organizations in an enterprise can be prevented by definitely defining the relationship of two organizations representing employees in major fields including participating subjects and themes of discussion. In other words, the labor-management council can be operated more effectively when the practical approach is implemented to guarantee the independence and identity of labor-management council. Consequently, as employees’ participation in management has been rapidly expanding and increasing all over the world, the enterprises in Korea and the state government as well as labor unions shall recognize that it’s the very critical political issue to create the employees’ participation in management suitable for the situations in Korea. This paper aims to contribute on the development of peaceful labor-management relationship as well as the competitiveness of Korean enterprises by proposing the method to improve labor-management council system.