학교 비정규직원의 근로조건 및 노조활동에 대한 인식 연구 : 경기도 교육청 공립학교를 중심으로 = Research on the Perception of Labor Conditions and Union Activities for Irregular Workers in Schools

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Since the financial crisis, there has been a sharp increase in the number of irregular workers employed by both the public and private sector as means to reduce labor costs and secure flexibility of their work force. The use and increase of irregular workers have been prevalent from national and local governments to public corporations and government institutes. As a result, the number of irregular workers has increased from 3,840,000 workers in 2002 (27.4% of all wageworkers) to 5,490,000 workers in March 2010 (33.1% of a total of 16,610,000 wageworkers). As can be seen in the rise of irregular workers due to lower labor costs, irregular workers have been assigned similar work schedules, duties and responsibilities with regular full-time staff but have been given much lower payments. The increase of irregular workers and their discriminating conditions have recently led to disputes in the public sector. In particular, schools have been at the forefront of these disputes. Irregular workers suffering from inferior working environments compared to their full-time colleagues have started to organize labor movements to protect their rights. The unionization of irregular workers has become a reality with the implementation of new regulations allowing multiple labor unions starting from 1 July 2011. Furthermore, this dispute between school employers and irregular workers are likely to intensify with increase of irregular workers in schools to accommodate new education policies (including increase of school welfare policies) without sufficient funding or personnel. Therefore, the school system provides an interesting and noteworthy case-study.

Along this line, this research focuses on surveying the operation conditions of irregular workers in schools and reviewing the pending problems and perception of irregular workers to enhance the effect of future irregular worker policies and provide alternative options as necessary. The research outcomes along with the questionnaire survey results are as below.

First, new legislations are needed to restrict the right of collective action among the three basic labor rights. Among laws based on basic labor rights only the Act on Labor Unions and Labor Dispute Mediation Laws are applicable to irregular workers. Not being civil servants, school irregular workers should be applicable to normal labor laws and statues. There has seldom been consideration of the basic labor rights of irregular workers till now considering that most irregular workers in schools were not unionized and had low incentive to unionize accepting the disadvantages associated with such action in relationship with their employers till now. However, the unionization and collective action of irregular workers are a matter time under the new labor law system allowing multiple unions and continuation of their irregular contract status. Under these conditions, new regulations restricting the collective action rights of irregular workers in primary and secondary schools within the Labor Union and Labor Dispute Mediation Laws are needed considering the uniqueness of schools environments. This regulation is needed for moral reasons to preserve schools as sanctified place of learning but also to ensure public interests and social order by not allowing our children in primary and secondary schools become pawns in collective actions based on the three basic labor rights.

Second, the standard employment regulations stipulate that wages for school irregular workers should be 21-fold of the mouthy salary for first year regular government employees. However, with the changes of salary regulations for government employees in 2011 to include extra benefits such as family and transportation support within the regular salary, the wage of irregular workers must be increased some 36.5~38.3% if strictly abiding by the established regulations. This irregularity was caused by government negligence of changing salary regulations for government employees without consideration of wages of irregular workers. However, irregular workers in schools have been demanding raises of wages based on the established employment regulations and have filed lawsuits for delay of payment against schools. The government has reacted to this by changing the employment regulations and establishing salary limits based on types of occupation. They have also claimed that this new regulation is not unfavorable to irregular workers in terms of its salary standards. However, irregular workers are not agreeing with the changed regulations based on the principle of prioritizing advantageous conditions. A new separate policy for irregular workers in schools seem to be required confronting such disputes surrounding the change of employment regulations.

Third, there are ambiguities in the actual employer of schools in employer-employee relations in school environments. The actual employer for government employees are the national or local government, while superintendent of education are business managing officers and headmasters are people working in the interest of the employer. There is no standing position on the relationship between workers like school accountants and the employer as the recent petition for establishing regulations for the superintendent to hire school accountants in Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education has shown. Furthermore, there have been doubts of school principles ability to manage labor relations as the principle concerned party. The current employment regulations only broadly summarize the authority of school principals in employing staff such as school accountants. There are insufficient regulations to prevent arbitrary decisions and actions by the principals. Therefore, there should be reform of the current regulations of giving the right of employer to superintendents to prevent disputes in labor relations and improve illegal and unfair labor relations management.