Employers try to secure competent employees to maintain a long lasting business, while workers try to join companies with prospects so that they can earn money to maintain decent living and to fulfill self-actualization. All these are made possible by...
Employers try to secure competent employees to maintain a long lasting business, while workers try to join companies with prospects so that they can earn money to maintain decent living and to fulfill self-actualization. All these are made possible by recruitments, job applications and employments.
Korea first witnessed a modern sense of employment in the 1980's when big corporations initiated open, biannual and large scale recruitments. After a foreign currency crisis broke out in 1997, big corporations went through a process of severe restructuring that led to a revolutionary innovation in recruiting system and forms of employment. In the 1980's, recruitments were mainly carried out in regular basis and large scale to hire new employees. But they have changed to being mainly carried out in irregular basis and smaller scale to hire employees with experience. As for the forms of employment, companies started to outsource their non-core businesses and rapidly expanded employment of temporary employees, including dispatched workers. Entering the 2000's, companies started to adopt more flexible employment system that allowed their affiliates to recruit whenever they were in demand of employees, instead of waiting for the corporation's regularly scheduled group-based recruitment. Companies also made their core employees as full time regular employees whereas they outsourced non-core employees or switched them to non-regular workers.
Recruitment methods and forms of employment became diversified by the enforcement of the so-called Non-Regular Employment Act of 2007, and disputes over recruitment have become more complex. Despite these developments, the academic and labor world have mainly been focusing on the legal status of non-regular workers and on the matter of time-off for union officers.
Thus, this study intensively reviewed Labor Law issues surrounding employment according to the recent enactment and revision of labor acts and the rapid changes to the global economic environment. General theories on employment, prohibitions on employment discrimination, various legal problems arising from employment process, and all sorts of legal issues on labor contract have been extensively researched and analyzed as follows:
First, all sorts of issues surrounding recruitment have been reviewed after examining the content and limitations of employer's freedom of employment in labor contract relationship. This study also examined the details, cases, and limitations on the discrimination against gender, nationality, form of employment, disability, age, and educational background. These are followed by studying legal issues on giving preferential treatment at the time of employment to a person of national merit or giving extra points to veterans. The study then reviewed remedies for the ones who violated the discrimination act.
Second, the problems of Labor Law arising from the employment process were examined. The study have closely looked at the judicial precedents and academic theories on the protection of applicant's personal information, such as going through personal records, security clearance, and performing credit and reference check. Also reviewed were those on the consequences of violating the personal information protection law, the scope and limitations of the employer's questioning right during a job interview, connections to an applicant's duty of telling the truth, and frauds on diplomas and careers. Also reviewed were special issues in the employment process, such as legitimacy of an identity guarantee contract, physical exam and restrictions on the employment of those with infectious disease. The study also went through legal reviews on the exclusion of intermediary exploitation by employment agents. It also examined legal issues regarding the labor union's help in finding jobs, exclusion of intermediary exploitation, and preferential or special employment of labor union member's family member as a form of restricted personnel right of the employer through the collective agreement of the labor union. In addition, the legal issues with internal conversion employment, which has been discussed in the field since the enforcement of the Non-Regular Employment Act of 2007. The problems with internal conversion employment include posting in-company job openings to fill the vacancy of a regular employee, conversion of non-regular to regular employment, and conversion from dispatched employment to regular employment within the company.
Third, the study looked at the issues of Labor Law regarding labor contracts . The studied issues were; conclusion of a labor contract and period of its effect, legal problems that arise when the required documents such as written oath has not been submitted, legal problems with a faulty labor contract, violation of Equality Act by public companies and big corporations by cutting down newcomers' initial wage after the global economic crisis in 2008, problems and legal nature of the hiring informal decision, unfair cancellation of the hiring informal decision and remedy for it, problems and legal nature of putting newcomers in trial period, problems and legal nature of refusing employment and wrongful dismissal, legal problems with employment cancellation when the hired employee with prior work experience provides false educational or career background - as recruitment of employees with experience became more common according to the recent changes to the employment system, and remedies to help an employee when he or she violated the prohibition of outside work.
Finally, the study summarized and sorted out all kinds of Labor Law issues surrounding employment and proposed measures for those issues.
To achieve research objectives stated above, precedents, cases, discussions and theoretical backgrounds were arranged by gathering previous studies such as books and research papers from Korea and overseas. Moreover, this study tried to create a place for discussion by analyzing and examining each areas of various cases on employment, utilizing the author's experience in the field while working as a human resources personnel and manager for the past 16 years.