The costs of appeal are assessed against the Plaintiff, including the part arising from the supplementary participation.

1. According to each provision of the Trade Union and Labor Relations Adjustment Act (hereinafter “Trade Union Act”), an employee may freely organize a trade union or join it (Article 5), and a trade union may demand an employer to conduct collective bargaining on behalf of its members (Article 29(1)). However, if a trade union exists in a single business or workplace, regardless of its structural form, at least two trade unions exist concurrently, each trade union shall, in principle, determine a representative bargaining trade union in accordance with the procedures for simplification of bargaining windows and request the employer to conduct collective bargaining.

(The main purpose of Article 29-2(1) of the Trade Union Act is to establish an efficient and stable collective bargaining system by effectively resolving the problems such as anti-condembing, etc. between trade unions or between trade unions and employers when multiple trade unions exercise their independent collective bargaining rights, lowering the efficiency of collective bargaining, increase in expenses, etc.

(Supreme Court Decision 2016Du36956 Decided October 31, 2017). A trade union that has not become a representative bargaining trade union under the system of simplification of bargaining windows cannot independently exercise its right to collective bargaining. As such, the Trade Union Act imposes an obligation of fair representation on an employer and a representative bargaining trade union to prevent discrimination against a trade union that has participated in the procedures of simplification of bargaining windows or its members in order to protect a trade union that has not become a representative bargaining trade union.

(Article 29-4(1). The obligation of fair representation functions as an institutional device to ensure that fundamental contents of collective bargaining rights guaranteed by the Constitution are not infringed, and the effects of collective agreements concluded between a representative bargaining trade union and an employer are unified.