노조법 개정안의 ‘노동쟁의 개념 확대’ 쟁점에 관한 소고

The three labor rights guaranteed under the Constitution and the Trade Union Act are organically linked. An industrial dispute is defined as a state of disagreement between labor and management on matters subject to collective bargaining, and the next phase following such an industrial dispute is industrial action. Accordingly, the concept of “industrial dispute” can be understood as a link between the right to collective bargaining and the right to collective action. An expansion of the concept, therefore, is directly related to the expansion of the scope of both collective bargaining and industrial action. Nevertheless, there has been insufficient consideration of the coherence of the legal framework provided by the Constitution and the Trade Union Act in discussions on the expansion of the concept of industrial dispute under the so-called “Yellow Envelope Act.” There have been vague assertions that the concept of industrial dispute should be broadened to guarantee the rights to collective bargaining and collective action, while concrete discussion on how to redesign relevant provisions of the Trade Union Act has been largely insufficient. Changes in the concept of industrial disputes proposed in the amendment bill to the Trade Union Act could create significant challenges in the interpretation and application of its provisions. Potential issues include an increase in the frequency of negotiations and confusion with judicial judgments. These, in turn, could bring about the risk of undermining the coherence of the Trade Union Act as a whole, indiscriminately expanding the scope of industrial disputes, increasing the burden of negotiations, encroaching on the judiciary’s adjudicative function, and weakening the principle of labor-management equality. In full consideration of such discrepancy in the current debate on the amendment to the Trade Union Act, this study reviews the concept of industrial disputes and key related issues and seeks reasonable alternatives to address the major problems of the proposed amendment to the Trade Union Act.