hankyoreh

Members of a committee for responding to the serious industrial accident at the Aricell battery factory stand outside the smoldering remains of the factory in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province, on June 26, 2024, where they demand a thorough investigation into any wrongdoing in the disaster and call for measures to be put in place to prevent similar tragedies. (Kim Young-won/Hankyoreh) 

“When you’re a temporary worker, they use you once and then dispose of you. If you get hurt — or if volumes decline — you get fired by text message. You don’t get severance, and you don’t get cases processed as industrial accidents.”

Kim, an ethnic Korean from China in their 40s who became a naturalized South Korean citizen two years ago, has been working for over four years in production jobs as a temporary worker at a manufacturing plant in the Bupyeong industrial complex in Incheon. When work is available, Kim signs a labor contract with a temporary work agency and heads to the factory to work.

Kim has signed numerous labor contracts with their agency and worked at various locations, including automobile parts and plating businesses.

For Kim, the tragic explosion and fire that occurred on Monday at the Aricell lithium battery factory — claiming the lives of 23 people, including 18 migrant workers — hit very close to home.

“When I was working at the plating factory in the past, I got plating solution in my eyes,” they told the Hankyoreh on Wednesday.

“I had to pay out of my own pocket for the treatment, and when I couldn’t leave my apartment for three days, I ended up getting fired,” they recalled.

“The people who died in this disaster were most likely in a similar situation to me, where the law might as well not even exist,” they said.

The dispatching of workers for production jobs has been a simmering issue for years at small manufacturing businesses operating in industrial complexes. Temporary work is a practice in which workers sign a labor contract with and receive wages from a temp agency while being overseen and directed by a different employer.

The Act on the Protection of Temporary Agency Workers prohibits the dispatching of workers for direct production at manufacturing companies and prescribes criminal punishments for violations.

But violations of these terms are rampant, as evidenced by the endless stream of job posts seeking people to work in manufacturing production one finds on job-search websites. Temporary agencies even operate commuter buses, which they use to transport temporary workers to the complexes.

Members of a committee for responding to the serious industrial accident at the Aricell battery factory hold a press conference outside the smoldering remains of the factory in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province, on June 24, 2024. (Yonhap) 

As South Koreans increasingly shun work at smaller manufacturing businesses, the gap has been filled with the illegal dispatching of migrant workers, including many ethnic Koreans from China.

“The trend these days has been direct hiring for skilled technical positions and dispatch worker hiring for simple production positions,” explained Kim Yong-cheol, the director of the labor counseling office for the local Korean Metal Workers’ Union chapter at the Seongseo industrial complex in Daegu.

“This allows [the companies] to reduce costs for managing hiring and other personnel duties, and since the temporary agency assumes responsibility when problems arise, they’re able to outsource the risk,” he said.

This sort of risk outsourcing has become increasingly widespread.

Practices of “labor flexibility” — where the companies engaging temporary workers dismiss them when there is no work to be done — are closely associated with violations of worker rights. Common examples include nonpayment of wages, failure to enroll in the four major social insurance schemes, industrial accidents, and improper termination.

A 2020 report on migrant temporary worker conditions published by the Gyeonggi Institute of Research and Policy Development for Migrants’ Human Rights showed 58.9% of respondents with experience doing temporary work — over half — replying that they had “never signed a labor contract.”

In addition to factors such as “low wages” (15.4%) and “the difficulty of the work” (11.9%), other reasons they cited for quitting jobs included “because they told me not to come in anymore” (16.8%) and “because the actual working conditions were different from the description” (11.1%).

“Already, the people who are ending up in the dispatch market are migrant workers and older South Koreans who have difficulty finding [other] positions,” explained Park Jae-cheol, the director of the Ansan Contingent Workers’ Center.

“Migrant workers in particular are often not familiar with the Korean language, which makes it difficult even for them to raise issues,” he added.

Then there’s the issue of workplace safety training and enrollment in industrial accident insurance. Some have analyzed that part of what made this most recent tragedy so deadly was that the temporary workers were unfamiliar with emergency evacuation routes and other workplace safety protocols. Moreover, Meicell, the temp agency that employed those working at the battery factory, had not enrolled its employees in industrial accident insurance.  

Situations like these are closer to the rule than the exception. 

“I’ve just been shipped off to plants, and have never really gone through any proper safety training,” said Kim. 

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, another person who until recently worked at a temporary agency told the Hankyoreh that their experience was similar. 

“We’re so busy getting straight to work that there’s no time for safety education or learning fire evacuation plans,” they said. “Most temp agencies don’t enroll you in industrial accident insurance, and most of the time will only bother with worker’s comp if there’s a major hospital bill involved.”

Many say that the government bears responsibility for the current state of affairs. Organized labor groups have spent years pointing to the issue of illegal dispatching of temp workers at industrial complexes and demanding measures be taken. 

“For years now, the Korean Metal Workers’ Union has reported illegal temp agencies to the authorities and sued them, but the Labor Ministry and prosecutors have been complacent in their responses, by clearing the agencies of charges or only giving them a slap on the wrist,” said Lee Dae-woo, the union’s chief of organization strategy.

“If the Labor Ministry keeps turning a blind eye to illegal temp dispatching, these kinds of tragedies will continue to happen,” he went on. 

By Kim Hae-jeong, staff reporter; Park Tae-woo, staff reporter

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