Cashier's death prompts E-mart to learn CPR

E-mart CEO Lee Gap-su, second from left, practices CPR at the company's conference room in Seoul, Friday. / Courtesy of E-mart

By Park Jae-hyuk

E-mart's 51 executives, including CEO Lee Gap-su, practiced CPR at the company headquarters on Friday.

The practice was a follow-up measure to death of a female cashier, 48, who suffered a heart attack at the discount chain's Guro branch in Seoul on March 31.

At first, the retailer denied it had failed to give proper education.

However, it finally came up with plans last month to prevent a similar tragedy.

Since the cashier's death, the E-mart union has demanded that management provide a safer workplace.

Also since last week, the union has also urged the Ministry of Employment and Labor to investigate the company's working conditions.

According to E-mart, all employees have practiced various types of first aid and its stores are now equipped with automated external defibrillators (AED).

However, a union survey this month showed that 73.1 percent of E-mart workers who had not been provided with health and safety education from the company were forced to answer they had.

Only 32.9 percent of the workers had been provided with the education every month, the survey showed.

Amid the ongoing controversy, E-mart cited as “fruit of the company's efforts'' the recent survival of a worker, who lost consciousness at the discount chain's Namyangju store in Gyeonggi Province and being taken by a rescue team to hospital.

“The worker could get well again because a manager safely handed over the worker to a 119 rescue team, after giving quick first aid,” an E-mart official said. “Our employees' efforts to make a safer E-mart finally paid off.”

However, given that the Namyangju worker's accident happened on a weekend and the Guro cashier was on night duty, the retailer faces criticism for heavy workloads.

The union has criticized Shinsegae Group, which owns the discount chain, of demanding that staff work harder since the conglomerate began implementing a 35-hour work week earlier this year.

The workers have urged management to hire additional employees so people can finish on time now that the discount stores have begun closing at 11 p.m., an hour earlier.

The union has also blamed E-mart for the death in March death of a moving walkway repairman at E-mart's Donong branch in Namyangju, Gyeonggi Province.

While inspecting a moving walkway after closing time, the man, 21, who worked for an E-mart subcontractor, fell into a gap underneath the machine which suddenly began operating.

Shinsegae Group Vice Chairman Chung Yong-jin has yet to apologize for the deaths, although the union has continued to ask him to do so.