[Plaintiff, Appellee]
[Defendant, Appellant] Korea Broadcasting System, Attorney Choi Hyu-seop, Counsel for the Defendant
[Judgment Below] Seoul High Court Judgment 92Na47214, decided February 24, 1993
[Order]
The appeal is dismissed.
The costs of the appeal shall be borne by the Defendant.
[Reasoning]
We examine the grounds of appeal.
On Ground 1
It is the established view of this Court that where the preparation or amendment of rules of employment (취업규칙) under Article 95(1) of the Labor Standards Act (근로기준법) contains content that deprives employees of vested rights or interests they hold and imposes disadvantageous working conditions, such preparation or amendment requires the consent of the group of employees who were subject to the previous working conditions or rules of employment, obtained through a method of collective decision-making by that group of employees, and that rules of employment prepared or amended without such consent are invalid unless they can be recognized as having reasonableness under generally accepted social norms (see this Court's Decision 89Da24780, decided March 13, 1990; Judgment 92Da39778, decided January 15, 1993, among others).
According to the facts found by the court below, the Compensation Regulations (보수규정) at issue, as amended by the Defendant Corporation effective January 27, 1981, were amended disadvantageously to the employees belonging to the Defendant, and the amendment was made without obtaining the consent of the employees belonging to the Defendant through a method of collective decision-making. As pointed out in the argument, the amendment of the Compensation Regulations was made in accordance with a policy adopted by the Government to remedy the irrational management practices whereby the Defendant Corporation and other government-invested institutions were operating at a deficit, thereby increasing the tax burden on the public, while the retirement allowance payment rates for their employees were significantly higher than those for ordinary public officials, causing financial difficulties; the amendment was made to correct this and to escape the deficit-ridden operation of state-run enterprises, in step with other state-run enterprises, with the approval of the supervisory authority and through a resolution of the board of directors. Furthermore, even if employees who received retirement allowances calculated under the amended Compensation Regulations after the amendment raised no objection, such circumstances alone cannot be recognized as establishing the kind of reasonableness under generally accepted social norms that would obviate the need to obtain the consent of the group of employees to the amendment of the Compensation Regulations. The same conclusion follows even when other circumstances pointed out in the argument are taken into account. Therefore, the lower court's determination that the Compensation Regulations at issue are invalid is justified, and it cannot be said that there was any error of misunderstanding the legal principles concerning the amendment of rules of employment or any failure to exhaust the necessary examination, as argued (see this Court's Judgment 91Da46922, decided September 14, 1992; Judgment 92Da32357, decided November 27, 1992, among others).
The argument contends that, at the time of the amendment of the Compensation Regulations, no labor union had yet been organized at the Defendant Corporation, and that due to the special nature of broadcasting-related work, there were practical difficulties in obtaining the employees' consent through a method of collective decision-making. However, this argument cannot be accepted, because the method of collective decision-making referred to above is not limited to a method whereby all employees of a single enterprise or workplace gather together at one place at one time to hold a meeting; rather, it also permits a method whereby, within each unit department of a single enterprise or workplace, employees exchange opinions among themselves, free from any intervention or interference by the employer, consolidate their opinions of approval or disapproval, and then aggregate these overall (see this Court's Judgment 91Da25055, decided February 25, 1992; Judgment 92Da39778, decided January 15, 1993).
Therefore, this ground of appeal is without merit.
On Ground 2
According to the reasoning of the judgment below, the lower court found the following facts: a labor union was established at the Defendant Corporation around May 20, 1988, and a collective agreement and wage agreement were concluded between the Defendant Corporation and the union around September 14 of that year; most of the employees belonging to the Defendant Corporation did not clearly recognize, even at the time the collective agreement was concluded, let alone at the time of the amendment of the Compensation Regulations at issue, that the amended regulations were invalid due to a procedural defect; during the collective bargaining, neither the Defendant Corporation nor the labor union raised any objection regarding the validity of the amended regulations, nor was there any discussion of consent or subsequent ratification; it was only around the beginning of 1990, prompted by a Supreme Court decision invalidating the retirement allowance regulations of another government-invested institution that had been amended under similar circumstances to those of the Defendant Corporation, that it came to be recognized that the Defendant Corporation's amended regulations were invalid; accordingly, it was only in the course of collective bargaining around September 1990 that the Defendant Corporation's labor union began to demand application of the retirement allowance payment rate under the former regulations; the Defendant Corporation, for its part, attempted to obtain the union's consent by including the retirement allowance payment rate under the amended regulations in the collective agreement, but due to a conflict of views between the Defendant Corporation and the union concerning the period during which the former retirement allowance payment rate should apply, this matter could not be included in the collective agreement, and discussion of the matter was deferred pending a court ruling. Based on these findings, the lower court rejected the Defendant's argument that, by concluding the collective agreement and wage agreement under the above circumstances, the Defendant Corporation's labor union had ratified the amended Compensation Regulations at issue, holding that such conduct could not be regarded as an expression of intent to ratify or consent while knowing that the amendment to the retirement allowance regulations was invalid. Upon examination of the record, the above determination of the lower court can be accepted as justified, and it cannot be said that there was any violation of the rules of evidence or any error of misunderstanding the legal principles concerning ratification of juristic acts.
Even if the Defendant Corporation's labor union or employees believed, at the time the collective agreement was concluded, that the Compensation Regulations at issue then in force were valid, and even if employees who received retirement allowances under those Compensation Regulations raised no objection, such circumstances alone cannot be regarded as constituting ratification of the invalid amendment of the Compensation Regulations at issue (see this Court's Judgment 91Da46922, decided September 14, 1992; Judgment 92Da32357, decided November 27, 1992). Furthermore, the fact that the labor union, organized after the amendment of the Compensation Regulations, included in the collective agreement (Article 6) concluded with the Defendant Corporation a provision stating that "the Corporation shall not lower current working conditions on any pretext, whether by reason of an omission from the agreement or by reason that they exceed the standards of the Labor Standards Act, and any portion falling short of the Labor Standards Act during the term of the agreement shall be null and void," cannot serve as a basis for concluding that this fact constitutes ratification of the amendment of the Compensation Regulations at issue. This ground of appeal is also without merit.
Therefore, the appeal is dismissed, and the costs of the appeal are to be borne by the losing party. This judgment is rendered as set forth in the Order, by the unanimous opinion of the participating Justices.
Justice Choi Jong-young (Presiding Justice), Justice Choi Jae-ho, Justice Bae Man-un (Justice in Charge), Justice Kim Seok-su