Conflicts between employees and employers
Introduction
Conflicts that come up between employees and employers are naturally occurring and inevitable in any capitalistic state. The conflicts may arise due to power inequality between the two parties and conflicting interests. By 1945, Korea was still under the Newly Industrialized Countries (NICs). Unlike in the advanced nations at the time, workers in Korea bore no power to exercise their collective rights in a free manner via strategies such as the creation of democratic unions. However, rather than indulge in the evaluation of union developments, this chapter takes a different trajectory where it attempts to provide a critical analysis on the incorrect presumption that Korean unions have an inadequate representative capacity in both firm and industry levels. In the process, the chapter provides an aggregate judgment on the unions through the analysis of dispute leverages, union security, organizational bases of the unions, and bargaining capacity.
The chapter begins by analyzing the development of industrial relations and labor markets that operate on an industrial level through ta historical context. This particular section explores the writ of union membership or participation in the federations for industrial unions and the general number of workers in different industries and sectors in the labor market, through an extensive period of about seven decades (Jeong, 2016). The seven decades that run from 1945 to the 2010s can be then categorized into five distinct periods. The periods include the pre-industrialization period the process of development under the state in the 1950s to the 1960s, the second early and third mature periods of industrialization, the period of economic crisis and assistance from the international monetary fund as well as the low economic growth period that started from 1999 to the present.
The chapter then analyses the three cases of industrial relations and industrial union growth. In this section, the writer provides a characterization of the functional and structural features of industrial relations and the unions in three industrial cases in the country. In the process, the chapter explores the city bus, chemical, auto assembly, and the auto transport sectors. The unions present in the present industry have acted the vanguard of vigorous enterprise movements that are democratic that are also distinct from their precedent movements (Jeong, 2016). These unions showed exemplary autonomy and militancy levels in the wake of democratization in the social and political contexts from the year 1987 to the year 1992. On the other hand, the Auto Transport Union under the city bus branch exhibited a representative capacity that is stable. This observation remained relevant in the transport sector in Korea. This particular unit is made up of a variety of regional unions with a centralized bargaining system and handling a wide pool of labor issues. The Auto Transport Union has high union densities that make it distinct from the Chemical Union. Other features of the union that distinguish it from the Chemical Union include strike leverages that are effective as well as union shop rules.
In the first case, the writer analyses the dissimilar yet weak capacities for representation among enterprise unions that fall under the chemical industries. Research in this category exhibited union organizational bases that are unstable and low union security. The research also indicated dispute leverage, enterprise bargaining capacity that is weak, and confinement to growth in annual wages. The second case of the evaluation handles the case of city bus unions and their regionally centralized bargaining as well as their stable representative capacities (Jeong, 2016). The first major finding in this second evaluation is strong dispute leverage. The other finding was the presence of union organizational bases that are stable and high security in the union. The third case of the research addressed the auto industry through enterprise unions and their many yet strong representative capacities. These enterprise unions indicated defensive shifts that had varying reactions cross different firms during period s of decline in the unions. Dispute the shifts; the unions exhibited dispute leverage and centralized bargaining that was quite strong. The union’s organizational bases also proved to be stable while the union security remained high. The term union security refers to the support levels granted by employers during the admission efforts in the recruitment and retainment of employees as members of the union.
Conclusion
South Korea, like most capitalistic nations, is prone to conflicts between employees and employers as a result of power inequalities and conflict of interest. This conflict often leads to the formation of trade union movements. For a long time, workers in South Korea did not have the power to exercise their collective labor rights through the creation of trade unions. In exploring the issues surrounding trade union movements in Korea from the year 1945, this chapter takes a different approach whereby it handles the critiquing of an incorrect presumption that Korean unions have an inadequate representative capacity in both firm and industry levels. The main aspects of the Korean trade union movements that the chapter attempts to analyze include incorrect presumption that Korean unions have an inadequate representative capacity in both firm and industry levels.