포괄임금제의 성립 및 유효요건

Abstract

The comprehensive wage system was institutionalized by the Korean Supreme Court, which has approved the wage practices of the working place in considering the practical convenience aspect. However, the comprehensive wage system has been criticized as a system that effectively neutralizes all regulations on working hours, additional wages and legal allowances set under the Labor Standards Act by fixing low wages and long working hours. In accepting such criticism to some extent, the Korean Supreme Court has recently rendered decisions with a limited interpretation of the comprehensive wage system, contrary to the earlier decisions in which the formation and validity of comprehensive wage system were admitted broadly. Examples are as follows: 1) the formation of an implied comprehensive wage agreement has been recognized only on a very narrow basis, unlike the formation of express comprehensive wage agreement; 2) wage difference claims are recognized except in cases where it is difficult to calculate working hours; 3) not only collective agreement or employment rules but the Labor Standards Act has also been reviewed by the Court as a criterion in determining whether the comprehensive wage system is disadvantageous to employee or not; and 4) unlike the past, the Court has refrainsed from using the expression ‘convenience of calculation’ or ‘encouraging the the employees’ motivation to work’. Despite such a shift in Court decisions, there still exists a strong criticism of the comprehensive wage system, which prevails in many work-places due to decisions that systematically admit the comprehensive wage system. Against this background, the Korean Government has also announced a national agenda dealing with strict regulations of the comprehensive wage system. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that even though the current decisions interpret the comprehensive wage system on a limited basis, the decisions need to be much stricter in light of mandatory rules of the Labor Standards Act on working hours, additional wages and legal allowances. The main points in this article are: 1) fixed total wage system should be regarded as invalid, because the fixed total wage system cannot specify the basic wage that serves as the basis for calculating various additional wages or legal allowances; 2) cases where it is difficult to calculate working hours (which is a type of a case that denies employees’ wage difference claim) should be interpreted to be a case where it is impossible to calculate working hours; 3) lastly, when the requirement for the formation and validity of comprehensive wage system are discussed, the mandatory rule nature of the Labor Standards Act should be faithfully considered.