[Plaintiff, Appellant] Plaintiff, Attorney Na Hang-yun, Counsel for the Plaintiff
[Defendant, Appellee] Construction Mutual Aid Association (건설공제조합), Attorney Min Dong-sik, Counsel for the Defendant
[Original Judgment] Seoul High Court Decision 77Na2947 rendered on April 6, 1978
[Order]
The appeal is dismissed. The costs of the appeal shall be borne by the Plaintiff.
[Reasoning]
The grounds of appeal raised by the Plaintiff and the Plaintiff's counsel are examined together.
According to the reasoning of the original judgment, the court below stated that the mere fact that the Defendant Association's previous rules of employment (취업규칙) contained no provision restricting the retirement age of its employees cannot be interpreted as guaranteeing that the Plaintiff, as an employee, could work at the Defendant Association indefinitely regardless of age. Having stated this, the court below found that although the Defendant Association unilaterally amended its rules of employment—without obtaining the consent of the group of workers who had been subject to the previous rules of employment—to newly establish a provision setting the retirement age of employees at 55 years and providing for dismissal upon reaching the retirement age, the setting of the retirement age at 55 years in this manner cannot be regarded as an unreasonable system departing from general social norms. Therefore, the newly established retirement age system cannot be conclusively determined to constitute a change in working conditions that infringes upon the Plaintiff's and other workers' vested rights under their existing working conditions, and accordingly, the Defendant Association's amendment of its rules of employment as described above cannot be deemed unlawful. Based on this determination, the court below rejected the Plaintiff's argument—premised on the opposite view that the amendment of the rules of employment establishing the retirement age system was disadvantageous to the workers and thus, despite requiring the consent of a majority of the Defendant Association's workers, no such consent had been obtained, rendering the amendment legally void as a matter of course—and accordingly dismissed the Plaintiff's claims in this case for wages and retirement allowance, which were premised on that argument.
The above determination by the court below is correct, and there is no error of law therein, whether by misapprehension of the legal principles concerning the amendment of rules of employment or by insufficiency of reasoning. The argument is without merit.
Accordingly, this 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 Ra Gil-jo (Presiding Justice), Ju Jae-hwang, Yang Byeong-ho, Im Hang-jun