If there was a practice of rehiring city bus drivers past the mandatory retirement age as contract workers, the Supreme Court said workers may be recognized as having a legitimate expectation to be rehired after retirement.
The Supreme Court's Second Division (presiding Justice Eom Sang-pil) said on the 1st that on Dec. 12 it overturned an appellate ruling that had sided with the plaintiff in a suit filed by Company A, which operates city buses, to nullify a retrial decision by the National Labor Relations Commission Chairperson on a wrongful dismissal remedy, and sent the case back to the Daejeon High Court.
B and C, who worked as bus drivers at Company A, reached the mandatory retirement age of 61 in Feb. 2022. The labor union asked management to extend their retirement and, if an extension was difficult, conveyed that they wished to continue working as contract employees. But Company A ended their employment on the grounds that they had reached the retirement age, without a separate response.
Company A's work rules and collective agreement set the mandatory retirement age at 61 and included a provision allowing union members past retirement to be given priority hiring as contract "choktaks" employees.
B and C applied for relief, saying the refusal to rehire was unfair, and both the regional labor commission and the National Labor Relations Commission ruled for the workers, recognizing their expectation right to be rehired as contract "choktaks."
The first trial reached the same conclusion. Company A argued that due to COVID-19 there were fewer bus runs and lower transport revenue, so there was no plan to hire contract "choktaks," but the court rejected that, citing factors including that 26 people retired at the mandatory age in 2022 while 36 new employees were hired.
The appeals court, by contrast, found it hard to recognize an expectation right to rehire, noting among other things that only 18 of the 38 workers who reached retirement age in 2021–2022 were rehired as contract "choktaks."
The Supreme Court reversed this. The court said, "Between Company A and its bus drivers, a relationship of trust can be seen as having formed that even upon reaching retirement age, they could be rehired as fixed-term workers if certain conditions were met."
In particular, it cited as grounds that, among the drivers who applied for rehiring as contract "choktaks" after retiring in 2021–2022, all were rehired except for B, C, and one other person.
With the Supreme Court overturning the lower court, the legitimacy of refusing to rehire the two will be reconsidered in the remand proceedings.