Reality of Safety and Health of Small Workplaces and Tasks
for Improvement

Hyun-cheol Ryu, head of research center, specialist in occupational and environmental medicine

The historyof discrimination and inequality is long and tough. Society have discriminated
against people by class, religion, ethnicity, race, skin color and gender,
taking inequality for granted.  Discrimination
and inequality persist although the patterns have changed as times change. The
cast system does not exist, but inequality and discrimination are still keywords
of today in the realm of labor, as the words of workplace harassment,
subcontracted labor, non-regular workers, dispatched labor, and Article 11 of
the Labor Standards Act. show. Although there might be difference in brutality
compared to the Middle Ages, discrimination is widespread in the field of labor
in the 21st century. In case of large or public corporations, the safety for
workers has improved relatively, and money compensation for risks has also
increased. However, workers in small workplaces are still at risk or even more
dangerous than before. Let alone risk pay, the condition of maintaining a job
itself presupposes risk-taking. There are inequalities depending on what they
do at work. Even if they do the same work, discrimination occurs depending on
whether they are a primary contractor or a subcontractor. They are under
discriminated because of their age, and even lead to death. Inequality and discrimination are rampant in the
workplace danger.

Discrimination in the safety and health at small workplaces

The ‘Democratic Labor Research Institute
affiliated with the Federation of Trade Unions’ published a meaningful report,
titled “The Real Conditions of Workers in ‘Small Workplaces’ with Less
than 30 Workers and Policy Alternatives”   to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Jeon
Tae-il in November 2020. The report, subtitled “Today’s Jeon Tae-il Report,”
reveals the inequality faced by workers in “small” workplaces in Korea.
According to the report, as of 2018 the number of small workplaces with less
than 30 employees accounted for 97.9% of all workplaces, and 61.1% of total
employees (including the self-employed) worked in small workplaces. As of
August 2019, about 58.4% of workers were found in small workplaces, and the
proportion of workers from vulnerable groups such as women, the elderly, and
low-educated workers was high. Statistical analyses and qualitative interviews
revealed that the fact that workers in small workplaces are discriminated
against their rights, such as wages, working hours, occupational status, social
insurance, and health and safety.[1] And it is intertwined
with the process of economic and social change in Korea. The large corporations
that developed through export focusing on heavy and chemical industries  began to have their own capabilities during
the 1980s based on the government-led manufacturing promotion policy of 1970s.
Their capabilities were strengthened by the strategy of ‘subcontracting
integration’ with large enterprises on the top and SMEs were incorporated into hierarchical
subcontracting system as sub-partners. The gap between companies is widening
due to unfair trade among contractors, which in turn leads to a gap between
workers according to the size of the company, and social inequality is
deepening.

An activist is presenting at a workshop for rights to safe work for workers at small workplaces.

Inequality is even more
evident in workplace safety and health issues. Resources such as facilities,
equipment, manpower, and procedures are required to manage risk, but small
workplaces are often unable to afford the resources and costs associated with
risk management but due to unfair trade practices between contractors. Factors
related to the safety and health in the workplace are diverse, such as
technology related to risk control, the employer’s will, the government’s
regulatory policy, etc., but none of these factors works properly and the risks
converge and amplify into the ‘small’ workplace. If a company is to pursuit
profit through the transfer of risk to sub-contractor, the government should
take responsibility for risk management and mobilize costs and resources for it.
However current policies does not work that way. Government did not guarantee
the minimum cost of safety and health management through correction of unfair
trade practices, and sufficient related public support was made. Rather, it kept
passive regulations by exempting small workplaces from obligations such as
establishing a safety and health management system on the grounds of smallness.

The legal provisions
on the principal’s liability are also not included in the policies. If an
employer who cannot afford to pay for management of the risk is allowed to
maintain business with the risk as collateral on the ground that it is too
small to regulate, the results would be injury and death of the workers.
According to the industrial accident statistics in 2019, the number of deaths
per 10,000 workers in workplaces with fewer than five workers was 1.65, which
is 1.5 times higher than the overall average of 1.08, and the trend has been
rarely changed since the statistics were compiled. Workers at workplaces with
fewer than 5 employees account for 16.0% of those covered by industrial
accident insurance, but they account for 33.9% of accident victims and 35.2% of
accident deaths. Workers in small workplaces where the risk of conventional
accidents such as falling, pinching, bumping, and crushing are not managed are
more likely to be injured and killed. In the case of industrial diseases,
workers at workplaces with fewer than five workers accounts for 17.4%, and
among those who died from disease, the proportion is 16.6%. And this is also a
testament to the fact that workers in small workplaces have low access to
workers’ compensation procedures and approvals for industrial diseases which
have higher barriers.[2]

In the face
of unchanged consequences for decades, the safety and health management of
small workplaces is dismissed as an unresolvable problem. With insufficient
preventive measures, small workplaces continue to be in a state of evasion of
management responsibilities while risks always present. In the process of
enacting the Act on Punishment of Serious Accidents recently, one aspect of how
the formal sector deals with safety and health issues at small workplaces was
revealed. The process
of enactment of the Corporate Punishment Act for Serious Accidents reflects the
growing awareness of the safety of workers and citizens in Korean society.
Companies are now questioning the responsibility of companies for labor
accidents that were tolerated in the process of compressed industrialization
and economic growth in the past. However, the Act on the Punishment of Serious
Accidents revised by the National Assembly excludes workplaces with fewer than
5 employees from the application and suspends its application to workplaces
with fewer than 50 employees. Regardless of the effectiveness of the law, this
is clear devaluation of the workers’ right to safety in small workplaces where a
significant proportion of serious accidents occur. Even 40 years  after the Occupational Safety and Health Act
was enacted, small workplaces do not properly implement safety and health
measures that meet the legal standards, which is a testament to the reality
that primary contractors are trying to escape from the law by reducing the
scope of application.

What should we do for safety and health in small workplaces?

First, we need to fill the void of responsibility.
Responsibilities for safety and health management of employers should be given
equally regardless of the size of the workplace, because the consequences of
failure in risk management are passed on to the workers. Reasonable
responsibilities should be imposed not on the size of the workplace, but on the
severity of the consequences resulting from the failure of risk management.
Rather than raising the management responsibilities such as prohibition of
contracting based on dangerous works, the management responsibilities should be
assigned according to the size of resources and ability to pay costs for risk
management in the workplace.  

To do this, the first step is to know
what, how much, and why is dangerous and where to start intervening. First, a
national level risk assessment is required. The original intent of the risk
assessment continues to be diluted and risk assessment is regarded as
cumbersome paperwork due to additional regulatory. It is no different than a
policy failure. A proper risk assessment at the government level should be
preceded. We need to identify small workplaces and workers that are not even
registered, let alone managed. Registration at workplace level is needed for safety
problem,  and management at the worker
level is required for the health issue. The way of registration should be
secured by utilizing various existing legal systems and information sharing. Registration
can be done along with distribution path of chemical substances,  distribution of hazardous machinery and
equipment, supply chain of the company, and through factory establishment
licensing. Also, risk assessment should be done
by collecting information and putting the existing data together utilizing various pathways. The pathways include volunteering
registration with government support being preconditioned, and registration
with management and regulation as precondition in case that presence of serious
danger at workplace is confirmed.

Based on this, risk
assessment should be conducted for the entire industrial ecosystem, not for
individual workplaces level. In order to manage risks, it is necessary to
identify specific risks rather than general situations. In addition, it is
necessary to identify targets with high-risk that priority for management is
given at an actual level, not a universal risk in terms of the size of the
workplace itself. The principal contractor should determine which part they
should be responsible for depending on the resources and costs required for
risk management. It is also necessary to impose to sanctions on companies without
basic equipment and resources necessary for risk management. In the long term,
it is necessary to make the cost for health and safety management incurred in
the entire process of production, distribution, and disposal including raw
materials in the industrial ecosystem be considered as prime cost rather than profit.
Those who profit from risk should be held accountable. However, for this, the
role of the public is inevitably required.

Until now, most of the government’s
support program for small workplace have been financial support without purpose
and direction. Now, instead of based solely on the size of the workplace, it is
necessary to predict the coverage level that have effects through support or
regulation and make decision of intervention. For small workplaces that lack
the necessary conditions and resources for risk management, support should be
provided based on the decision whether a company could manage risks with the
provided support or not. And if management is impossible, it should be able to
be excluded from the industry. In addition it is necessary to think about the
roles of the state, the government, and local governments each, and to have
system in in terms of management and supervision. It is also necessary to
establish a sound health and safety administrative organization to plan and
carry out these processes. 

On the other hand, it is
important for workers to obtain rights based on substantive bargaining and
bargaining power. The safety and health of workers of small workplaces is not
obtained immediately even if formal rights such as the establishment of a
safety and health management system for employers and guarantee of workers’
participation to it regardless of size with the revision of the Occupational
Safety and Health Act. are acquired. According to an additional survey of the
Economically Active Population Survey conducted by the National Statistical
Office in 2019, the rate of union membership of workplaces with less than 30
employees was 4.0%, significantly lower than 33.5% for workplaces with 300 or
more employees. In 2020, Korean Confederation of Trade Unions conducted a survey
of workers in workplaces with less than 30 employees. Only 1.5% responded that
they were union members, which is far lower than 11.8%, the rate of union
membership in Korea in 2018.[3] It is evident that workers’
participation is essential for safety and health at workplace. It is proven
academically that union activities raise the level of occupational safety and
health. In order to enable workers in small workplaces to choose to join labor
union as a way of protecting themselves, it is necessary to think about various
ways to gain bargaining power beyond the company-specific union.

It is difficult to find an easy solution
to the safety and health problems of small workplaces. However, we should not
leave the problems waiting for natural selection for the reason that they are
hard to be figured out. Let’s do what we have to do. Workers in small
workplaces are still collapsing. The importance of life and death is
independent of the size of the workplaces.