노동법적 시각에서 본 헌법재판소의 입법정책기능

Abstract

The numerous revisions of Labor-related Laws since 1960s were focused on maintaining political stability and national security at the expense of the Fundamental Labor Rights of workers. The fruits of rapid economic growth were not distributed equally among the stake-holders. The changes seen in the labor following 1987 in Korea can be classified into those driven by the Great Worker Struggle and the democratization movement following the "6·29 Democratic Declaration" which continued up to 1997. And the subsequent series of revisions between Feb. 1998 to Nowadays, sparked by the Asian financial crisis and the "2·6 Compromise" of 1998. Labor-related Laws prior to 1987 had been characterized by restriction and suppression of labor movements and the three basic labor right, and the compensatory over-protection offered to the workers. In the light of the situation, the discussions on and the revision of Labor Laws following 1987 up till nowadays took on a new paradigm. Efforts were made to eliminate the rigidity of Labor laws and to reverse their restrictive keynote. This paper has made analysis of 46 judicial cases of the Constitutional Court following 1987 up till nowadays in statistic analysis and legal research. In the field of the Law-making of Labor-related Laws, the role of the Constitutional Court was not be satisfied with legislative results, in roughly speaking. To makes thing worse, the Constitutional Court had not maintained neutrality between progressivism and conservatism. They had kept conservative ideas and gone backward to the main stream of the democratization movement at sometimes. Therefore it required to reconsider what was the constitutional principles of three Fundamental Labor Rights of workers when it enacted in 1948.