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Members of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) burn effigies reading

The Park Geun-hye administration is planning to institute more new guidelines in the first half of 2016 that would prevent terms in collective agreements granting labor unions involvement in corporate hiring and management decisions.

But the move is expected to generate a severe backlash from organized labor, with signs that the guidelines could end up preventing unions from participating in transfer placements, the composition of personnel committes, and other areas closely tied to union members’ working conditions. Critics are accusing the administration of trying to weaken labor safeguards in general after previous guidelines on the termination of underperforming workers and employment regulations.

Sources with the Ministry of Employment and Labor reported on Jan. 27 that it plans to develop internal guidelines that would permit the “fixing” of terms introduced during labor-management bargaining that allow unions “excessive involvement in hiring and management decisions,” including illegal terms in collective agreements for second-generation hiring within union member families and the granting of sole bargaining group status to unions.

“Labor union involvement in personnel and management decisions is an irrational situation that prevents companies from making the swift decisions they need to for management purposes, and it needs to be stopped,” said a senior ministry official.

According to the official, analysis was completed last year using collective agreements from 2,700 workplaces around the country that had both unions and 100 or more employees.

“Our plan right now is to analyze the data by type and pass it on to labor supervisors in the field so they can provide guidance to reflect it when labor and management engage in collective wage bargaining this year,” the source added.

Another ministry official said the decision had not yet been made on whether to have the terms be administrative guidelines or “guidance suggestions” as a reference to labor supervisors during bargaining.

The official hinted that the new guidelines would be announced within the first half of the year.

“Our ministry’s position is that the regulations can’t be distributed too late if labor supervisors in the field are going to provide direction and oversight reflecting them during labor-management collective bargaining this year,” the official said.

Administrative guidelines and guidance suggestions differ little in their force as legal norms, since both are independently developed by the administration to regulate internal administrative actions.

The main issue with the guidelines is the ministry’s reference to “excessive union involvement” in personnel and management decisions during negotiations. Preferential hiring for family members of union members is potentially in violation of both the Framework Act on Employment Policy and the Employment Security Act, which forbid employment discrimination without reasonable grounds, while collective agreement terms recognizing specific workplace unions as sole bargaining entities conflict with the Trade Union and Labor Relations Adjustment Act, which allows for multiple unions. But apart from those clearly illegal examples, other forms of union involvement in personnel and management decisions are not against the law per se. For that reason, the administration’s insistence on implementing administrative guidelines is expected to draw a backlash from the labor community.

Another issue is the fact many of the areas described by the ministry as “irrational” are related to decisions on working conditions that are actually important to employees. A report published by the ministry last June on collective agreements at the country’s top 30 companies in terms of sales cited problems with terms related to transfer placements, including the dispatching of union members to factories in different regions, and terms requiring union consent to appointment of union management.

One other example of “excessive involvement” in management decisions cited by the ministry had to do with collective agreement terms requiring union consent for corporate decisions on collective restructuring, including downsizing and encouragement of voluntary resignations. The Labor Standards Act stipulates “deliberations” with unions when downsizing, but not “agreements.”

Collective agreements requiring the company to discuss outsourcing of specific internal duties or departments with the union were also mentioned as a restriction on personnel and management rights. According to the ministry’s research, nearly half of all workplaces include at least one such term in their collective agreements.

“With a lot of companies expected to do restructuring this year, these kinds of excessive collective bargaining terms could prevent companies from responding nimbly, which ends up hurting company and workers alike,” a ministry source said.

Encouraging improvements to “illegal and irrational” collective bargaining practices has been one of the Park Geun-hye administration’s central governing goals, which was also included in its three-year plan for economic innovation. The Ministry of Employment and Labor previously attempted to introduce similar measures late last year despite fierce objections from organized labor, but ended up holding off for fear they could prove a stumbling block to a tripartite labor, management, and government agreement.

“This is a case of the administration trying to neutralize unions by following up its two previous guidelines [on the dismissal of underperforming workers and employment regulations] by involving itself in the autonomous labor-management area of collective agreements,” said Korean Confederation of Trade Unions spokesperson Park Sung-shik. “It’s an inherent abuse of authority.”

By Jeon Jong-hwi, staff reporter

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