The revised Trade Union Act, known as the "Yellow Envelope Law," marks three months in effect on the 10th of this month, but bargaining between primary contractors and subcontractors is still not being properly carried out in the field.
According to the office of People Power Party lawmaker Lee Jong-bae and the Ministry of Employment and Labor (MOEL) on the 4th, 424 primary contractors received bargaining requests from 1,121 subcontractor unions between March 10, when the revised act took effect, and the 22nd of last month. However, only 51 primary contractors publicly announced the bargaining requests. Among these, only six entered actual bargaining, including one voluntary negotiation.
Analysts say that bargaining procedures are being delayed as primary contractors, now newly burdened with negotiating with subcontractor unions under the revised act, seek to obtain legal judgments to the greatest extent possible. A growing number of primary contractors are pursuing reexamination procedures at the National Labor Relations Commission, following decisions by regional labor relations commissions, over whether subcontractor unions' bargaining rights should be recognized. As of the 2nd of this month, 19 cases had been filed for reexamination at the National Labor Relations Commission in objection to regional commission decisions. As regional commission cases filed immediately after the law took effect are concluded one after another, National Labor Relations Commission cases are expected to increase further. A considerable number of large-company primary contractors are reportedly strongly inclined to seek court rulings even after the National Labor Relations Commission's decisions.
Questions are also being raised about the effectiveness of systems designed to support smooth bargaining between primary contractors and subcontractors. In the case of the "Collective Bargaining Judgment Support Committee," which the labor ministry separately established to support such bargaining, it recognized the employer status of the primary contractor for a National Tax Service call center subcontractor union at the end of last month, but the bargaining fell into a deadlock because the decision was not enforceable. One regional labor relations commission also faced criticism for "failing to play its role," as it accepted a request to correct a bargaining announcement from a large company's outsourced catering provider but did not rule on whether the primary contractor held employer status.
For this reason, some point out that the problem was rushing to introduce the law without addressing issues that had been anticipated before its implementation. While the government said that implementing the Yellow Envelope Law would allow cases to accumulate, thereby establishing a direction for improvement, critics argue that the government is neglecting confusion in the field, as no proper bargaining cases have emerged even three months after implementation.
One business community official said, "From a management standpoint, since the criteria (of the Yellow Envelope Law) are ambiguous, we cannot simply follow a regional labor relations commission's decision just because it made one." He added, "The intent is not to deliberately drag things out, but to seek as wide a range of judgments as possible."
