[Plaintiff, Appellant]
[Defendant, Appellee]
[Judgment Below] Seoul High Court Judgment 89Na45058, rendered July 6, 1990
[Order]
The appeal is dismissed.
The costs of the appeal shall be borne by the Plaintiff.
[Reasoning]
The Court examines the grounds of appeal submitted by the Plaintiff's litigation representative.
According to the reasoning of the judgment below, the lower court found the following facts based on the evidence presented: the Defendant company may discipline employees whose work performance or premium collection performance (performance in concluding insurance contracts and depositing premiums) is unsatisfactory, following deliberation by the Personnel Committee, and the types of disciplinary action include reprimand, salary reduction, suspension, and dismissal; on May 2, 1988, the Personnel Committee resolved to dismiss the Plaintiff on the ground that his premium collection performance was unsatisfactory, and the Defendant company accordingly dismissed the Plaintiff; among the Defendant company's seven sales departments (later increased to eleven) and the Sales Development Department, the Plaintiff initially worked in Sales Department 2 and Sales Department 4, and was regularly promoted to department head in July 1982 and assigned as head of the Sales Development Department, and then in April 1983 became head of the newly established Sales Department 8; Sales Department 8, partly because it was newly established, showed markedly lower sales performance than other sales departments, and during the Plaintiff's tenure as department head, it continuously ranked lowest among the ten departments, with premium collection performance amounting to less than half or two-thirds of that of other sales departments, and even falling short of the sales performance of the Sales Development Department, which concurrently handled employee training and insurance solicitation duties; as it again showed the lowest sales performance among the eleven departments in 1984, the Defendant company held the Plaintiff responsible and, on September 1, 1984, removed him from his position as head of Sales Department 8 and assigned him as a management officer of the Sales Development Department; even as a management officer, the Plaintiff's premium collection performance remained poor, and on July 1, 1986, he was placed on standby assignment in the General Affairs Department, and on October 1, 1986, was again assigned as a management officer of the Dongdaemun Branch, where he was given a monthly premium collection target of 20,000,000 won; as the Plaintiff's premium collection performance there also continued to be poor, the Defendant company, on February 12, 1987, imposed a reprimand on the Plaintiff for having achieved only a monthly average of 10.1% of the above target during the period from October 1, 1986 to December 31 of the same year; thereafter, as his performance continued to be poor, reaching only 21.4% of the target, the Defendant company issued a warning to the Plaintiff on September 16 of the same year; nevertheless, in 1987 the Plaintiff again achieved only a monthly average of 23.1% of the target, and on December 3, 1987, the Defendant company again imposed a reprimand on the Plaintiff; the Defendant company assigns monthly premium collection targets according to rank and ability to all sales employees except department heads, and the Plaintiff, as a management officer or sales officer at the department-head level, the highest rank among the Defendant company's regular employees, received a monthly salary of approximately 1,400,000 won, and the Defendant company generally sets each sales employee's premium collection target at approximately 15 times the salary amount, so that, even considering that the Plaintiff may have been at some disadvantage in carrying out sales activities, such as maintaining previous client relationships, due to having gone through the aforementioned three-month standby period in the General Affairs Department, the monthly target of 20,000,000 won assigned to the Plaintiff was not relatively excessive, and there were even employees at lower ranks, such as deputy department heads and section chiefs, who were assigned much higher targets than the Plaintiff; during the period from October 1986 to March 1988, the Plaintiff's performance amounted to only about 22.1% on average of the above target of 20,000,000 won, which was only about 6% of the average performance of section-chief-level employees ranked lower than the Plaintiff; in view of the Plaintiff's such poor premium collection performance, the Defendant company considered that the Plaintiff lacked ability in sales work and even attempted to transfer the Plaintiff to a department other than sales, but such transfer proved difficult because lower-ranking employees avoided the Plaintiff due to a prior incident in which the Plaintiff had reported another lower-ranking employee's premium collection performance as his own; the Defendant company, prior to the disciplinary dismissal at issue in this case, had even proposed to the Plaintiff that if he took honorable retirement from the Defendant company, it would help him open an agency of the Defendant company; meanwhile, as of June 1, 1988, the Defendant company was showing the largest business losses among all domestic non-life insurance companies, causing significant managerial difficulties to the extent that even the company's labor union raised the issue, and the company was the only one showing a loss on its settlement of accounts—these and other facts as set forth in the judgment were found by the lower court.
Upon examination of the record, the above factual findings of the lower court are correct, and there is no violation of the rules of evidence as argued in the grounds of appeal.
The term "justifiable cause" as provided in Article 27, Paragraph 1 of the Labor Standards Act (근로기준법) refers to a case where there exists a cause attributable to the employee to such a degree that, in light of social norms, the employment relationship cannot be continued, or where there is an unavoidable managerial necessity; therefore, where an employment contract or company regulations such as the rules of employment contain provisions concerning dismissal, dismissal in accordance with such provisions shall be deemed to have justifiable cause, unless such provisions violate the Labor Standards Act and are thus invalid (see this Court's Judgment 85Na3733, rendered July 15, 1986).
The lower court held that, in light of the fact that the Defendant company, as a for-profit corporation engaged in the insurance business, has its business success or failure determined by the level of its premium collection performance by the nature of its work, the disciplinary provisions as set forth above cannot be deemed invalid, and further that, where the degree of unsatisfactory premium collection performance is determined not by abstract or arbitrary standards but by taking into account all relevant circumstances, such as the employee's position, remuneration, work experience, the overall work performance of other employees, and the company's management conditions, and it is found that the employee lacks even the minimum level of job performance ability expected of an employee, then dismissal in accordance with the above disciplinary provisions shall be deemed to have justifiable cause. Based on this premise, and in light of the above findings of fact, the lower court determined that the Plaintiff's long-term premium collection performance as set forth above was not merely somewhat lower relative to other employees, but fell short of the minimum performance generally expected in light of the Plaintiff's position and remuneration; therefore, under such circumstances, the Defendant company's measure of disciplinary dismissal of the Plaintiff, applying the company's personnel regulations, could not be deemed an abuse of the right to discipline, and constituted a case falling under "justifiable cause" as provided in Article 27, Paragraph 1 of the Labor Standards Act.
In light of the Plaintiff's cause attributable to him and the Defendant company's management conditions at the time, as revealed in the above facts lawfully established by the lower court, the above determination of the lower court is deemed justified and acceptable, and there is no error of misapprehension of the legal principle regarding "justifiable cause" as provided in Article 27 of the Labor Standards Act as argued in the grounds of appeal. All the arguments are without merit.
Therefore, the appeal is dismissed, and the costs of the appeal shall be borne by the losing party, and it is so decided as set forth in the Order by the unanimous opinion of the participating Justices.
Justice Choi Jae-ho (Presiding Justice), Yoon Kwan, Kim Ju-han, Kim Yong-jun