복수노조에서 개별교섭 요건의 재검토

Separate bargaining system stipulated in Trade Union and Labor Relations Adjustment Act is in practice turned into a system in which the employer arbitrarily decides bargaining channels, causing labor-management conflicts. This is due to a misinterpretation of ‘employer’s consent’ stipulated as the requirement for separate bargaining in the Act. ‘Consent’ is only possible when ‘a request by the other party’ has been made, but the Act does not specify ‘the other party.’ Thus, the subject of the separate bargaining request needs to be defined by interpretation. The subject of the separate bargaining request is to be interpreted as all trade unions participated in the precess of the bargaining channels unification. Therefore, the requirement of separate bargaining is ‘the request by all the unions participated in the process’ and ‘employer’s consent’ to such a request. If the subject of the request is interpreted as a single union, it leads to an irrational result where the employer can arbitrarily decides separate bargaining. The legal effect of the consent among all unions participated in the process and the employer is, strictly speaking, not ‘separate bargaining’ (for each individual union) but ‘multichannel bargaining’ (as opposed to single channel bargaining). Where there are two unions, each union shall have separate bargaining, but where there are three unions, one can have separate bargaining and the others can go through the unification of bargaining channels. The separate bargaining system is allowing multichannel bargaining by labor-management autonomy, prior to the Labor Relation Commission’s decision on the division of bargaining unit.