earticle

영어

Nineteen years passed since wage bargaining between labor and management became social issue since the Korean government’s June 29th Democratization Degree in 1987. Until now not only the wage level is higher compared to productivity but also wage payment system is not modernized, causing the erosion of international competitiveness, That is until present labor market is not functioning as the changes in production market. Thus both quantity(employment) and price(wage) adjustment are not functioning properly in the Korean labor market. Accordingly the adjustment is mainly relied on changes in overtime, however even the overtime adjustment faced difficulty as the legal hours of working reduced to 40 hours per week due to the changes in the labor law. One of the most serious problem in the process of wage bargaining is that both labor and management depended upon the figures from the economic forecasting. Furthermore, it is observed that wage increase is faster than labor productivity increase. In order to resolve the problem it is suggested in the wage bargaining labor and management use a conservative forecasting and in the year-end they could adjust by paying bonus, such as both Japan and Singapore experienced since latter half of 1980s. Korea is urged to implement a wage reform in an effort to realize reasonable and more scientific wage bargaining can be realized.