2020 Volume 46 Pages 90-106
In South Korea, the Act on the Establishment and Operation of Teachers' Union (Educational Workers Labor Union Act) was enacted to partially recognize teachers' rights to work and to legalize the Korean Teachers and Educational Workers' Union (KTU).
This paper aims to reveal the reason why the Educational Workers Labor Union Act was enacted as a“special law”of the Labor Union Act, not of the Civil Servants' Law or education-related law. I analyzed the process of enacting the Act, focusing on the internal discussions of KTU and the changes in the view of the teaching profession by the Ministry of Education and the Korean Federation of Teachers' Association (KFTA). The main results of this paper are as follows.
First, the KTU and the KFTA have influenced each other. When the KTU was being formed as an outsider union, the KFTA tried to break away from its image as a “government service association” by reorganizing its internal organization, pushing for collective bargaining with educational administration. The KTU was influenced by KFTA's legislation on the advancement of teachers, and had tried to create a politically favorable situation for legalization.
Secondly, there were not only changes in discussions within the KTU, but also changes in the view of the teaching profession held by the Ministry of Education and the KFTA. The Ministry of Education expressed opposition to the establishment of teachers' unions, emphasizing teachers' law-abiding spirit, but began to recognize a part of teachers' right to work in the late 1990s to meet international standards. The KFTA insisted on obtaining the rights to collective bargaining, while claiming that it is a professional teachers' association.
Third, as mentioned above, the KTU and the KFTA had a similar view of teachers' rights to work, while there was a difference in their perception of rights to collective bargaining. The KTU interpreted the right to bargain collectively as guaranteeing teachers' independent union rights without legal restrictions. They recognized that as long as the education law restricts them, it is not a negotiation held in the equal relationship with the educational administration. This is the reason why the KTU rejected the special law that applies only to teachers and based its establishment on the Labor Union Act.
The KTU regarded teachers in collective bargaining as equivalent to educational administration staff. That differs from the perspective of the KFTA, which emphasizes the duty of political neutrality of teachers as just“government employees”. The“dualization”of collective bargaining, which has been criticized in previous studies, is due to the difference in views of both institutions regarding the teaching profession.
