This study is designed to clarify the connection between Korea’s social corporatism system and flexicurity of labor market, and present a role of social consensus to promote flexicurity in labor market. It tries to analyze the relationship of the in...
This study is designed to clarify the connection between Korea’s social corporatism system and flexicurity of labor market, and present a role of social consensus to promote flexicurity in labor market. It tries to analyze the relationship of the institutionalized Korean Tripartite Commission after the Asian Financial Crisis and flexicurity. The analyses result is as follows.
First, the role and character of the Korean Tripartite Commission is as follows: First, the committee was, different from the similar social corporatism system for labor restriction strategy in the past, each interest party participated fully, resulting in democratic social pact, and it was a place of control market economy rather than arbitrary discussion of policy by the state. Second, nevertheless, the issues discussed in the committee sought not to reduce the risk derived by neo-liberalism, but to promote the polarization and divide the labor market. Third, as a result of analysis, the reason was that for the topics discussed by the committee, government dealt with flexibility of labor market, which was a neo-liberal issue, but the labor side argued for basic introduction of social safety net, limited to the demand side of the corporatism in the past. Combined with large corporate-centered labor movement and safety net centered at social insurance based on all-day labor, it did not contribute to stability of the weak group of labor market such as part time laborers, which became serious in the future.
Next, for Korea’s labor market flexicurity, it can be divided into the solidified core labor class and flexible non-regular periphery labor class, and stability of labor market, including social insurance, is weak. Also, if the fact is combined with the committee, it is as follows: First, the flexibility issues agreed at the committee, layoff and labor dispatch system were combined with large corporate-centered labor movement and failed to make the regular labor class as flexible, and therefore, the labor cost was reduced through non-regular laborers, and the number of non-regular labor was increased. Second, nevertheless, labor side, which was merely an issue of demand side, agreed to improve basic level of welfare, and this combined with conservative fiscal spending of the state, resulting a failure to respond to the weak group in the labor market.
Based on the above analyses, future task is as follows. First, the issue to be discussed in the future social corporatism must solve the polarization of labor market caused by stronger flexibility of neo-liberalism and to contribute to social cohesion. To do so, the topic must be flexible, high-welfare state to provide stability to the non-regular laborers, which are too flexible, and make the rigid regular class flexible. Second, for this, it needs to transform to labor movement by industry, which can represent the whole labor market, beyond the previous large corporate-centered labor movement. Lastly, government must play active role and form a consensus system based on trust and respect by each interest party.