• East Asian Journal of Business Economics (EAJBE)
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.1-9
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• 2019

Purpose - This study aims to examine whether key differences in characteristics of unions have significant implications for absenteeism. To uncover what characteristics of union made workers make decisions to be absent, this study used such key dimensions of unionism as democracy, cooperative strategy of a union, and d density rate. Research design and methodology - The research model of this study is that absenteeism has positive relations with union's democracy and density. But it has negative relations with union cooperative strategy. This study was conducted by survey method on 333local unionized business entities of metal industry in South Korea. Results - The result shows that significant and positive relationship between unions with high density rates, democracy and absenteeism which is in line with the argument of the previous studies. Different from the expectation, the hypotheses 2, it has been shown that there is positive relation between cooperative strategy of union and the decision of workers to be absent. Conclusions - Employers with unions with high density rates could not fully exercise disciplinary power against those workers absent at workplace since a strong union shields them effectively from punishments by employers.

• Korean Journal of Labor Studies
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.95-136
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• 2018

As the number of precariats grows, their poor labor rights and working conditions are becoming issues of major concern all over the world but how to represent their interests is still controversial. Basically, the union is the institutional mechanism for representing the labor rights. However, it is difficult for workplaceand enterprise-based unions to fully represent the labor rights of precarious workers. Recently, so-called community unions have emerged in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan as independent organizations representing the rights of non-standard workers. Community unions refer to labor unions which organize precarious workers across firms at the regional level. They are known to be suitable for covering the unemployed, job seekers, indirect employment workers, short-term contract workers, and small-firm workers. In South Korea, since the financial crisis in 1997, a dramatic increase in the number of precariats leads to emergence of new types of trade unions such as the Youth Community Union, the Arbeit Workers' Union, the Artist Social Union and the Korea Musician's Union. They have engaged in various activities to guarantee the labor rights of precariats. Recently, researchers have also tried to identify defining characteristics of these new forms of unionism. To expand research on trade unionism in South Korea, this study compares two different types of community unions: the Youth Community Union and the Arbeit Workers' Union. We believe that this attempt can contribute to the research on the alternative labor movement. For this purpose, this study starts with theoretical discussions on community unions, and compares the Youth Community Union with the Arbeit Workers' Union based on the five characteristics of community unionism: membership and organization structure, the recognition struggle, the type or scope of interest, solidarity with other civic organizations, and the repertoire of resistance strategies. Based on this comparative analysis, this study seeks to foresee the possibility of how community unionism will develop in South Korean in the future.