International Law

Hurray! LMB?s Labor Minister Suggests Rational Reforms

Apparently having survived his background-check scare, President Lee Myung-bak’s new Minister of Labor Lee Young-Hee declared his intention for a new labor-management relations paradigm: Management will no longer be denied by the state the benefit of the protection of law.

The Dong-A Ilbo’s English edition reports on an interview with Lee:

...Lee said, “I have not considered the dispatch of public security to the sites of labor-management disputes, but my position is that violators of the law should certainly be held responsible.”

“Just as President Lee Myung-bak was a role model by accepting a special probe and being investigated himself, the law should be accepted by powerful people and labor activists without exception,” he said. “It seems that those in the labor community have the notion that the law is not important and a thing of previous authoritative (sic) regimes.”

This is profound news, if Labor Minister Lee can actually carry out this intention. Lack of legal protection for management in trade-union disputes has been a glaring irritant to Korean conglomerates and foreign investors alike, and has led to capital flight as Korean companies invest elsewhere while foreign investors decide to bypass the country altogether.

Lee’s final statement agrees with a thesis of mine: Korea’s government is sometimes tentative in its enforcement of certain laws (traffic and labor-management relations are standouts) because of a deep-seated insecurity over the fact that past authoritarian governments have not had much political legitimacy. It’s been fashionable in the last 10 years to bash Korea’s laws as a tool of oppression while at the same time abusing the law as a tool of oppression—thus undermining rule of law. Roh Moo Hyun has been particularly obnoxious in this regard. As a lawyer I consider this trait of Roh’s the worst of his many, many faults.

My University of Washington law-school Professor John Haley (now at Washington University in St. Louis) wrote a book about the Japanese legal system which he titled Authority Without Power: Law and the Japanese Paradox (highly recommended); he kindly dropped in on my office one day when he visited Korea and we discussed whether I should write my own book about this country, which I would title Power Without Authority as a tip of the hat to Prof. Haley. That’s something I haven’t gotten around to doing, which means there’s probably someone else who will take that excellent title. (I have my own idea who would do it to me, too.)

Back on topic: Lee additionally addressed, albeit gingerly given the third-rail aspect of Korea’s “just cause” employment-security protection, the need to introduce more flexibility to the employment system. Lack of flexibility, in particular the inability to lawfully terminate most regular employment relationships, is a millstone around the necks of Korean employers. It has also produced a large underclass of workers on short-term (less than two years) temporary employment contracts, who don’t have any form of career path because employers don’t want to be stuck with them for life.

The Labor Minister’s suggestion of longer-term (four or five years, he says) temporary contracts probably isn’t the solution. The solution to flexibility, in my opinion, is to dump the current interpretation of “just cause” in favor of a more rational standard of “at-will” employment tempered by some reasonable restrictions.

Full post as published by Korea Law Blog on February 29, 2008 (boomark / email).