적정임금 보장과 근로의 권리

The Constitutional Court considers that the right to work is a means of solving livelihoods, expressing one's personality and ensuring human dignity, and that it implies not only the right to job opportunity but also the right to a working environment, the latter of which includes the right to demand just wage. The normative perspective of Article 32(3) of the Constitution of Korea as a standard of judicial review tends to read it as a guarantee of minimum working conditions. However, considering the point that the latter part of Article 32(1) stipulates the state's obligation to ensure adequate wages, that Article 32(3) suggests that the standard of working conditions should be at a level that guarantees human dignity, and that the purpose of the right to work and the guarantee of human dignity should be implemented in wages, Article 32(3) should be interpreted as a constitutional order for the state to act to ensure adequate working conditions beyond the minimum level. If the minimum wage is aimed at ensuring a livelihood, an adequate wage has its own function and value in ensuring the sustainability of society, including realizing social justice and maintaining stability through the adequate functioning of social functions. Given the changes in the normative and consciousness surrounding labor, it is time to move beyond the “minimum” debate and solve the old but new issue of finding the normative meaning of the 1980 Constitution's “guarantee of an adequate wage”.