Labor Union
Labor Union
What is a labor union?
- An autonomous organization grounded in the three labor rights under the Constitution
- With multiple unions, the bargaining channel unification procedure applies
- A separate system with a different purpose from the labor-management council
When a union forms, what changes at the company is not the mood but the decision-making structure. Issues that management used to decide and announce, such as the wage increase rate, working-hours reform, and personnel transfer criteria, become items on the bargaining table, and the employer cannot refuse or delay bargaining without a justifiable reason. What practitioners actually feel is less that decision-making authority is gone and more that there is one more procedure on the way to a decision. Union activity is protected by law from the moment the certificate of union establishment is issued, so your first response right after learning of the union’s formation shapes labor relations for years to come.
The bargaining procedure runs on fixed dates. When a union demands bargaining, the employer must post notice of that fact internally for seven days, and deadlines follow at every later stage, such as the final notice of participating unions and the period for unions to voluntarily decide on a representative bargaining union. At workplaces with multiple unions, bargaining channel unification is the rule, and separate bargaining is possible if the employer agrees, but either way you must treat all unions fairly. If the representative bargaining union and the employer discriminate against a minority union, it can be the subject of a correction request to the Labor Relations Commission for breach of the duty of fair representation, and a collective agreement is valid for up to three years.
Many people also confuse it with the labor-management council. The council is a statutory consultation body that must be set up and held every three months at any workplace with 30 or more regular employees, whether or not there is a union. It differs in legal basis and purpose from a union, which contests working conditions through bargaining and industrial action. The moment you decide to drop the council because a union now exists, or to ignore a bargaining demand because the council already reached agreement, both systems are neutralized at once.
Incidents usually happen on the shop floor, not at the bargaining table. A team leader’s passing remark that “joining will hurt your next evaluation,” a transfer that singles out union officers, or a long-standing practice of paying full-time union officials’ salaries can each be found to be domination, interference, or an unfair labor practice. That brings the risk of remedial orders from the Labor Relations Commission and criminal penalties, and it also removes the cards the company could have played in bargaining. This is why manager training comes before bargaining preparation. Procedures and deadlines may be amended, so please check the latest laws and consult a labor relations specialist.
Inwoo LeeExpert in leadership, communication and performance management
Hwi KimCEO of HRDIST & Talent Development Systems ConsultantThe Constitution guarantees workers the right to organize, the right to bargain collectively, and the right to collective action. The Trade Union and Labor Relations Adjustment Act sets out how unions are established and operate, as well as the bargaining channel unification procedure.
One Friday afternoon, a copy of a union establishment certificate arrived by fax at Company A, an auto parts manufacturer with 320 employees and annual revenue of about KRW 80 billion (≈ US$59,853,400). It had 140 members and was the first union in the company’s 24-year history. Over the weekend, talk of “who the ringleader is” spread among the production team leaders, and the HR head decided that keeping managers quiet mattered more than preparing for bargaining. (Hypothetical example)
- On Monday morning the HR head gathered the plant manager and 21 team leaders, stressed that 'the moment you ask whether someone has joined or try to talk them out of it, it becomes an unfair labor practice,' and issued a written notice banning one-on-one interviews with union members.
- When the union demanded bargaining just nine days after it was formed, the HR team took advice from a labor law firm and posted notice of the demand on three internal bulletin boards for seven days. It did not miss a single deadline through to the final notice.
- An existing white-collar union of 48 members overlapped with a newly formed union of 140, raising the question of bargaining channel unification. The company followed the majority-union verification procedure without any agreement to separate bargaining and confirmed the representative bargaining union.
- At the first bargaining session, the CEO said, “We can’t answer 12 of your 18 demands today. Instead, we will bring supporting data to the next session.” That put any dispute over good-faith bargaining to rest early on.
- Regular reassignments of two union officers had been scheduled, but the labor attorney advised, “Moving them now would draw suspicion on timing alone.” The company postponed the reassignments by three months and documented the reasons for the personnel decision.
- After 14 bargaining sessions over six months, the company signed a collective agreement without any industrial action. During the same period there were zero unfair labor practice remedy applications, and voluntary resignations among production workers fell from 19 in the same period the previous year to 7.