경제환경변화에 따른 구조조정의 법리

Abstract

Economic restructuring is an area where the collision between protective labor law and new forms of work organization is especially severe. In the United States, many employers no longer value long employment commitment, but rather seek the ability to deploy labor flexibly and to outsource production. This is of course a response to the exposure of many industries to the heightened international competition flowing from financial and trade liberalization. It also reflects the renewed focus in many corporations on maximizing shareholder return, as opposed to the interests of other shareholder such as employees. In such an environment, restraints on termination and outsourcing are likely to be particularly unwelcome. However, how a national labor law system adapts to reduced employer commitment to workers partly depends on the system's underlying regulatory philosophy. The United States has historically had little in the way of restrictions on firm restructuring, outside the collectively organized sector of the economy, it is unsurprising that it has imposed few obstacles to firm reorganization. In other parts of the world, protective labor law has offered more robust resistance to employer's desire to reduce obligations to their employees. Protection of job security and related entitlements are much more extensive. Western Europe is a prominent example. Again, this is consistent with longstanding underlying regulatory tendencies(in continental Europe at least) favoring collectivist arrangements and condiderable state regulation of the employment relationship. In the Asia-Pacific, there has been great regional diversity in approches to labor law. Many countries have experienced fundamental changes in regulatory institutions and norms in recent decades. No common approaches to restructuring should therefore be expected. If such economic restructuring is inevitable, is there any possible ways that could harmonize between free market principle and the protection of workers' right? Moreover more collisions are expected in the course of globalization of labor.