The Evolution of Korean Industrial and Employment Relations explores current employment and workplace relations practice in South Korea, tracing their origins to key historical events and giving cultural, politico-economic and global context to the inevitable cultural adaptation in one of Asia’s ‘miraculous’ democracies.
A key factor in Korea's economic success is the nature of industrial relations in Korean business and industry. Joo-Yeon Jeong presents a comprehensive survey of the current state of industrial relations in Korea. He shows how union membership has changed over recent decades, and how the focus of bargaining has widened from purely financial considerations to include a much wider range of issues including, principally, issues related to job security. In addition, the book considers the role of government in shaping the legal and institutional environment, and of employers, who have taken a more aggressive role towards unions since the mid-1990s.
Collective bargaining and workers’ voice are often discussed in the past rather than in the future tense, but can they play a role in the context of a rapidly changing world of work? This report provides a comprehensive assessment of the functioning of collective bargaining systems and workers’ voice arrangements across OECD countries, and new insights on their effect on labour market performance today.
Derived from the renowned multi-volume International Encyclopaedia of Laws, this monograph on South Korea not only describes and analyses the legal aspects of labour relations, but also examines labour relations practices and developing trends. It provides a survey of the subject that is both usefully brief and sufficiently detailed to answer most questions likely to arise in any pertinent legal setting. Both individual and collective labour relations are covered in ample detail, with attention to such underlying and pervasive factors as employment contracts, suspension of the contracts, dismissal laws and covenant of non-competition, as well as international private law. The author describes all important details of the law governing hours and wages, benefits, intellectual property implications, trade union activity, employers’ associations, workers’ participation, collective bargaining, industrial disputes, and much more. Building on a clear overview of labour law and labour relations, the book offers practical guidance on which sound preliminary decisions may be based. It will find a ready readership among lawyers representing parties with interests in South Korea, and academics and researchers will appreciate its value in the study of comparative trends in laws affecting labour and labour relations.
Employment Relations in South Korea provides readers with an overarching view of Korean employment relations and insight into recent changes, and also to help the general public understand more easily the various phenomena and changes in Korean employment relations.
This book shows that government labour and social policies, together with improved basic workers’ rights, helped minimise the costs of Korea's economic and financial crisis while also contributing to overcome it.
We are currently witnessing some of the greatest challenges to democratic regimes since the 1930s, with democratic institutions losing ground in numerous countries throughout the world. At the same time organized labor has been under assault worldwide, with steep declines in union density rates. In this timely handbook, scholars in law, political science, history, and sociology explore the role of organized labor and the working class in the historical construction of democracy. They analyze recent patterns of democratic erosion, examining its relationship to the political weakening of organized labor and, in several cases, the political alliances forged by workers in contexts of nationalist or populist political mobilization. The volume breaks new ground in providing cross-regional perspectives on labor and democracy in the United States, Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Beyond academia, this volume is essential reading for policymakers and practitioners concerned with the relationship between labor and democracy.
