Business feeling pressure over strengthened labor protective law

By Baek Byung-yeul

With new legislation that will increase the punishment of business owners and CEOs for workplace accidents taking effect next January, businesses are calling for its implementation to be postponed until they are “ready” to establish safety systems.

The National Assembly passed the widely known severe disaster law, Jan. 8, with the aim of increasing the level of accountability for business owners in order to prevent worker deaths caused by insufficiently applied safety measures.

Under the new law, business owners and CEOs can be imprisoned for at least one year or fined up to 1 billion won ($909,400) for industrial accidents caused by “inadequate” workplace safety measures. The law will go into force Jan. 27, 2022.

The country's business lobby groups oppose the legislation saying the new law treats every business owner as a potential criminal.

Claiming that it puts more emphasis on increasing punishment for business owners, they said the new law would see business operators introduce more automation in order not to spend money on safety costs and this could consequently cause more unemployment.

Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) Chairman Park Yong-maan said implementation of the new law needed to be slowed down as all business operators were struggling with growing uncertainty amid the continued spread of COVID-19. The chairman also said every interest group ― political, business and labor ― should devote themselves to preventing industrial accidents.

Firms in the construction industry have protested the most as construction sites will be those worst affected. According to data from the Ministry of Employment and Labor, 56.9 percent of workplace accidents in 2019 occurred at construction sites.

An official from the local construction industry said the law needs to be more formulated so that both companies and subcontractors can establish clear-cut lines of responsibility for safety measures.

“Ambiguity may occur in workplaces when the law actually takes effect. In the construction business there are complex relations between companies that give an order for a construction project and their subcontractors,” the official said on condition of anonymity.

Despite the demand to slow down enforcement of the law, Lee Nak-yon, chairman of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK), turned this down saying the new law must be implemented as planned.

“We need to implement the law first and then spend time finding ways to improve it,” the chairman said during a recent interview with local media.