Reconstructing Labour Law Actors beyond Employment

Abstract

This article argues that the nature of precarious work can be grasped as the disintegration of the employment relationship which was a historical compromise concerning the distribution of cost and risks between capital and labour, in particular, along Fordist corporate boundaries, while analysing how the formal-and-informal division of labour has changed, corresponding to the change of power relations between labour and capital, focusing on Korean cases. Many legal systems fail to identify who should take responsibility for workers’ rights, by viewing individual corporate entities separately. However, labour law actors – the ‘worker’ and the ‘employer’- should be identified not in a single workplace but with reference to the whole value chain and labour market. In conclusion, it is argued that it is essential to enlarge collective labour rights, and in particular, to secure freedom of association for precarious workers beyondemployment boundaries.