스마트워크와 노동법 — 스마트워크의 개념과 대응법제의 현황을 중심으로 —

Abstract

The huge wave of ‘information society’ that shook our society in the late 1990s brought about the revolutionary changes of the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ after the ‘Ubiquitous Era’. The preparation of various laws and systems for the Fourth Industrial Revolution is so important as to have been adopted as one of the top 100 national tasks of the present government that was launched in May of this year. Such policy trends seem to be maintained with continuous and focused attention. This change was possible because of the rapid development of online information and communication technology. From now on, the development of online information and communication technology is expected to accelerate exponentially, and eventually, it will change the existing paradigm that our society has existed in. The labor market cannot be an exception to such changes. The ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ will increase the demand for workers engaged in information and communication-related occupations and will also bring about an unemployment problem caused by replacing simple functional personnel with robots. In order to solve these problems, it is expected that various changes will be brought about such as a deepening discussion on social security and the labor market. What cannot be overlooked is that various forms of work are emerging that are different from the existing forms of work due to the development of online information and communication technology. A typical example is the emergence of ‘smart work’, i.e. ‘working forms that work in all or part of the working time outside the traditional office by utilizing information and communication technology’. In the United States and Europe, such forms of work have become commonplace since the early 1990s through the concept of ‘Telecommuting’. In Korea, since around the year 2000, some private companies have introduced and used smart work. Since the mid-2000s, there has been an aggressive promotion plan under the government initiative. Smart work has various advantages such as the reduction of air pollution, expansion of employment opportunities for female workers and disabled, improvement of work efficiency, cost reduction, improvement of quality of life through a harmony of work and family. However, in spite of these advantages, domestic ‘smart work’ has been introduced and implemented only by some companies, despite the government's active efforts to activate ‘smart work’. The sluggish utilization of smart work can be attributed to the existing corporate culture that emphasizes face-to-face contact and the problems faced by the Korean labor market. However, in comparison with other countries such as the US, Europe, and Japan, the fact that Korea does not have enough laws and systems to promote or regulate smart work is also a cause for concern. On the basis of this problem, this study started from the question of whether the existing labor-related laws can faithfully discipline smart work, which is a new form of providing work. The contents of the study are as follows. First, I clarified the concept and type of smart work that is subject to labor law discipline and examined its characteristics. This is because Smart Work is used in a similar name so it is difficult to establish the concept and make it subject to labor laws. Next, reviewed the legal countermeasures to discipline smart work. Finally, I proposed a reasonable alternative to the subject of this study.