hankyoreh

People walk past a Paris Baguette store in Korea in this undated file photo. (Yonhap)

Testimonies from colleagues have surfaced suggesting that the 23-year-old worker who recently died at an SPL factory, had in fact been working alone and not in a pair as the company suggested.

The worker in question died in the early morning hours of Oct. 15 after getting caught in a sauce mixing machine at an SPL factory, a bread ingredient manufacturer affiliated with food and beverage giant SPC Group located in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province.

Shortly after the accident, SPL put out a statement saying that the deceased had “worked in a group of two," but the other worker listed on this paper was actually doing a different task at the time their coworker died.

According to testimonies made on Monday by the Korean Chemical, Textile & Food Workers' Union (KCTF), the umbrella Korea Confederation of Trade Unions, and the deceased’s colleagues, K was found dead after being caught in an ingredient mixing machine. She had been working on the sauces that go in SPL’s refrigerated sandwiches.

According to the labor union and the colleagues of the deceased, the 23-year-old was “repeatedly putting in as much as 15 to 20 kg of raw materials into a 120 cm-high machine alone while standing in front of the machine.”

Immediately after the accident, the company claimed that the work had taken place “in a team of two.”

Young workers and students hold a press conference outside the headquarters of SPC in Seoul’s Yangjae neighborhood on Oct. 17, calling for an explanation of the death of a 23-year-old who died at an SPL factory. (Yonhap)

However, the union and colleagues explained that the other worker, who was supposedly assigned to work in a team with K, was in fact working on different sandwich ingredients at the time, making it difficult to ascertain that K had been dragged into the machine.

B, the boyfriend of the deceased who also worked at the same factory together and is well aware of its goings on, met with the Hankyoreh on Monday and shared his thoughts on the situation.

"The company said they were working as a two-person team at the time, but the two people were not doing the same job,” he said.

“If there was even one person next to [her], they would have been able to stop the machine by pressing the emergency stop button,” B continued.

According to the Ministry of Employment and Labor's explanation, there is no legal obligation for this workplace to operate a two-person team.

However, if working in pairs is specified in the company’s statement of work or manual but is violated, this could amount to a violation of Article 4 of the Enforcement Decree of the Serious Accidents Punishment Act (SAPA).

The SAPA requires identifying harmful and dangerous factors according to the specific characteristics of a workplace and then taking appropriate measures to deal with such risks.

In fact, according to a safety standards document obtained by the Hankyoreh related to the operation of these SPL mixing machines, the number of workers listed for operating these machines is two.

In response, an SPC official claimed that K’s working partner was not assigned to another task but was only temporarily in a different space from K to do other work that was needed for the mixing of ingredients.

“[The other worker] was only in a different place from K for nine minutes before the accident,” the SPC official said.

The labor union, however, disagreed and countered the company's narrative.

“Through several colleagues who worked [at the factory] at that same time, we found out that the two had been working in different places for a long time, not just before the accident,” the labor union said.

Kang Kyu-hyeok, KCTF branch president for SPL, said at a press conference that day, “We have continuously demanded more workers be hired due to a lack of night shift personnel, but our calls went unheard,” clearly explaining the reason why it would have been impossible that K was working in a team of two at the time of her death.

“[SPL] also got rid of the safety training that required workers to come in 30 minutes earlier without pay,” Kang explained, pointing to the company’s insensitivity to safety.

Instead, Kang explained that workers would sign signatures stating that they received safety training that they had not in fact received.

By Park Tae-woo, staff reporter; Jang Hyeon-eun, staff reporter; Jeon Jong-hwi, staff reporter

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