A taxi workers' union is seeking recognition of Kakao Mobility as a principal employer and moving to open collective bargaining with the platform firm, signaling that South Korea's revised labor union law — which imposes a bargaining duty on companies with effective control over workers — is spreading into the platform industry.
The National Taxi Workers' Federation, affiliated with the Federation of Korean Trade Unions, plans to file a request this week with the Gyeonggi Regional Labor Relations Commission for a corrective order on the public notice of its bargaining demand, labor sources said on the 27th. The federation sent Kakao Mobility a formal letter demanding collective bargaining on Sept. 10, but the company did not post public notice of the demand within the legal deadline, prompting the union to pursue follow-up steps. "With the revised union law in force, the scope of principal-employer status has widened, so we decided to demand bargaining directly with the platform company," a federation official said.
Before the Gyeonggi commission can order the company to post the notice, it must first determine whether Kakao Mobility qualifies as an employer of taxi drivers under the union law. If the commission recognizes the company's employer status and issues the order, the taxi union would become the first to bargain directly with a platform company.
The federation expects employer status to be recognized, arguing that Kakao Mobility has effectively determined drivers' work volume and income through its dispatch algorithm. The union has put forward bargaining items including disclosure of the criteria behind the dispatch algorithm, standards for driver ratings and account penalties, commission and incentive structures, and protections for workers as artificial intelligence and self-driving technology are introduced.
Kakao Mobility, for its part, says legal review must come first because there is no precedent for such bargaining. According to the federation, the company replied that existing court rulings and standards have not been established, and that legal criteria for determining employer status should be confirmed through judicial proceedings. The crux of the Gyeonggi commission's ruling is whether control exercised through a dispatch algorithm can be recognized as employer status under the union law. Delivery riders and other workers classified as workers in special types of employment have no separate employer under the Labor Standards Act, and have bargained with platform companies by relying on a broader definition of employer under the union law.