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The Ministry of Labor will conduct
full-scale safety and health inspection for workplaces from November 15 to December 14.
The Ministry of Labor, together with the Public
Prosecutor’s Office, will conduct safety and health inspection for a month-long period from November 15 to December
14.
To prevent industrial accidents in Korea whose rate is relatively high compared with advanced countries and does not easily fall, the Ministry of Labor has
organized joint inspection teams through consultation with the Public Prosecutor’s Office. They will raise safety awareness
among employers by inspecting the state of safety and health in each workplace and strictly enforcing laws against any legal
violation.
The workplaces subject to inspection this time are those where death accidents happened, those which have
failed to report or concealed their industrial accidents and those which provide poor working environments.
The things
to be inspected will include workplaces’ health measures to prevent occupational diseases as well as their safety measures
against dangerous elements which could cause traditional accidents such as falls, collapses, etc.
The inspection will
be conducted even for workplaces that have failed to report or concealed their industrial accidents.
But workplaces
in the process of carrying out safety and health improvement plans of their own and workplaces (blue workplaces) with a good
record of safety management will be excluded from this inspection with the intention of promoting workplaces’ voluntary
safety management.
* Workplaces implementing safety and health improvement plans refer to those which among workplaces
with frequent accidents or poor working environments, have established a comprehensive workplace improvement plan of its own
under the order of the Ministry of Labor and are currently implementing it.
* Workplaces with a good record of safety
management refer to those evaluated and selected as excellent workplaces in terms of safety management to promote voluntary
safety management among workplaces (blue : good, yellow : moderate, red : bad).
Unlike previous preventive inspection
aimed at raising safety awareness among employers, the main feature of this inspection is that a fine for negligence will
be imposed immediately on any workplace violating relevant laws.
Each regional labor office will establish and implement
its own self-inspection plan based on the selection criteria determined through consultation with the Public Prosecutor’s
Office after taking into account its characteristics and administrative capacity.
Once a self-inspection plan is established,
the regional labor office will inform selection criteria in advance.
And inspection teams will be composed of the
even number of members to enhance their transparency and fairness.
The continuous joint inspection by the Ministry
of Labor and the Public Prosecutor’s Office is expected to raise safety awareness among employers through strict law
enforcement, thereby promoting their industrial accident prevention activities
It was revealed that more than
70% of applicants for unemployment benefits are short-term workers who were employed for less than three years.
According
to statistics on unemployment benefits complied by the Work Information Center (www.work.go.kr) based on unemployment insurance
database, those with a less than three-year job tenure accounted for 71.9% of the total unemployed applying for unemployment
benefits in September 2004. This is a 2.7%p increase from 69.2% in the same month last year.
Those with a less than
one-year job tenure and those with an one to three-year job tenure made up 30.1% and 41.8%, respectively, (compared with 29.8%
and 39.4% a year earlier) of the total applicants for unemployment benefits. By workplace size, 39.5% of applicants with a
less than three-year job tenure, up 2.1%p from 37.4% a year earlier, came from workplaces with less than 10 workers while
60.5%, down 2.1%p from 62.6% a year earlier, came from workplaces with 10 workers or more. In other words, short-term workers
increased more in smaller workplaces.
The number of the unemployed applying for unemployment benefits in September
2004 recorded 34,832, slightly up 7.7% over the previous month (37,778) and up 25.0% over the previous year. This suggests
that employment situations still remain short of our expectations.
The number of applicants for unemployment benefits
sharply increased relative to unemployment rate between late 2003 and early 2004 but since then has leveled off, reflecting
the recent employment situations in trouble.
The proportion of those from workplaces with less than five workers in
the total applicants for unemployment benefits were up 2.4%p from 18.9% in the same month last year while that of applicants
from workplaces with 500 workers or more decreased 1.1%p from 10.0% to 8.9%. This shows that employment is more precarious
in smaller workplaces.
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