비정규직 문제와 노블리스 오블리주

Abstract

The Protection of irregular workers is the most necessary task in Korea. Though the proposition of irregular workers has been growing continually from ‘90s and is over 1/3 or 1/2 of total working population in Korea, their social and economic situations are very bad and poor. Responding this problem, this government has made a set of acts which are in general named as ‘Acts concerning irregular worker’. With these legislative efforts, the realization of protection for them depends on voluntary actions in civil societies such as employers, trade unions or employers’ associations. This is connected very deeply with ‘nobless oblise’. This paper aims to confirm who have the obligation of ‘nobless oblise’ and what the contents of ‘nobless oblise’ are in the problem of irregular workers. Duty-holders of ‘nobless oblise’ must have high positions or strong powers being qualified to burden ‘oblise’. Concerning with the problem of irregular workers, they must have social voice, interest-relationship and power for problem-solving. In this respect, it is obvious that government, large companies and ‘trade unions for regular workers in large companies’ (‘large company unions’) are competent to be duty-holders of ‘nobless oblise’, but regular workers as individual can not be duty-holders in spite of their indirect interests by the existence of irregular workers. The contents of ‘nobless oblise’ include ethical or moral duties as well as legal duties. In this respect, duties of each ‘nobless’ in this problem are like followings. (A) Large companies should guarantee the just and favorable pay and working conditions of irregular workers in small companies which have depended economically on them. (B) Government, local government or public agencies should show private sector good example as employer. Recently government addressed ‘comprehensive countermeasures for irregular workers in public sector’(‘06.8) and they might be suitable model in this problem. (C) Large company unions have great failures in overcoming the selfishness mainly because of limitation of organization-pattern as company union. The trend of changing company unions into industrial unions may help the economic and social situation of irregular workers. But at the present state, large company unions are able to act for irregular workers employed in their companies or small companies working for their companies.