hankyoreh

The funeral for of Kim Yong-gyun

Four out of every ten workers killed in accidents on the job are employees of in-house subcontractors rather than the companies that use their services, study results show.

With over 18% of all workers employed by in-house subcontractors, the figures point to the increasing entrenchment of “risk outsourcing” practices in which potentially life-threatening duties are passed off onto workers at in-house subcontractors.

“Last year, subcontracting workers accounted for 309 of 796 workplace fatalities investigated, or 38.8%,” the Ministry of Employment and Labor (MOEL) said on Apr. 3. An investigation of the affiliations of workers killed in accidents at the workplace showed nearly 40% of them to be employed by an in-house subcontractor rather than the workplace at which the accident occurred. In-house subcontractors also employed 355 of 884 workers killed in accidents in 2016 (40.2%) and 343 of 854 in 2017 (40.2%).

The significance of the “38.8%” number can be easily understood when viewed in light of the percentage of in-house subcontractor employees among all workers. According to results published last year in an MOEL report on forms of employment based on a survey of 3,478 workplaces with 300 or more workers showed “non-affiliated workers” – i.e., in-house subcontractors – to account for 906,000 out of 4,865,000 total employees, or 18.6%. The numbers mean that while in-house subcontractors represent fewer than 20% all employment, they account for close to 40% of workplace fatalities. It was against this backdrop that a major societal outcry was triggered last year by the death of Kim Yong-gyun, an in-house subcontractor employee who suffered a fatal accident when he was caught in a conveyor belt while working at the Taean Power Station.

MOEL announced the same day that it would be “conducting a full-scale review of safety and public health regulation enforcement between Apr. 10 and 30 for 400 workplaces, including 100 public institutions that employ multiple in-house contractors and 300 workplaces with 100 or more employees.”

“We will focus on verifying companies’ compliance with safeguards for employees at their subcontracting businesses, as well as with safety regulations for the servicing, maintenance, and repair efforts where accidents frequently occur,” the ministry said.

By Jeon Jong-hwi, staff reporter

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