1. Current Status of Industrial Accidents According to data from the Ministry of Employment and Labor and Statistics Korea, the annual number of deaths due to industrial accidents is decreasing. However, severe trauma cases caused by safety accidents still occur. By industry, construction accounts for 51.9% of all deaths, with manufacturing making up 22.8%. The types of fatal accidents include falls, entanglements, collisions, being struck by objects, and being crushed. Additionally, there are deaths caused by fires or chemical injuries.
Efforts to Reduce Mortality Rates Efforts to reduce mortality rates include focused management of fatal accidents, protection of vulnerable groups such as essential workers, strengthening support for autonomous safety systems, and strategies for post-COVID and future responses. These efforts are based on the key principles of "field-centered" and "immediate improvement of risk factors," aiming to address and mitigate risk factors.
2. The Most Important Factors: Leadership Perception Change and Fundamentals
1) Change in Leadership Perception The most crucial aspect in preventing industrial accidents is the perception of the leaders who run the companies. Allocating budget, facilities, and personnel for safety and health, and ensuring these are applied in the actual field is essential. No matter how much experts provide their opinions and efforts are made for improvement on-site, if the leaders who have the authority to make decisions do not empathize, nothing will change. In fact, 'tabletop discussions' among leaders without professional safety/health knowledge often waste significant time and money on systems and facility investments that do not lead to substantial risk improvement. The benefits go to consulting firms and safety equipment and facility vendors, not the workers.
Consulting experts may recommend significant investments in safety sensors for equipment and pipelines to prevent proximity to hazardous sources, leak prevention of hazardous chemicals and gases, worker education, and expanding smart safety facilities like CCTV/live cams for monitoring work. It is crucial to educate and supervise workers to change their perception of safety, but more importantly, leaders of each company or business should receive regular education to acquire the correct knowledge about safety. Instead of delegating this education to consulting firms, public officers from national institutions such as the Occupational Safety and Health Agency or the Ministry of Labor should conduct the training.
Companies are also aware of this and are investing substantial amounts of money to achieve 'zero accidents' while trying to improve. However, these investments and improvement efforts are being actualized by the perception of each leader and the opinions of a few recruited experts. When the top decision-makers do not listen to or address the discrepancies between the voices from the field and administrative realities, and only focus on immediate visible outcomes by investing money, accidents occurring in blind spots end up blaming only the departments that failed to prevent them, searching for someone to hold accountable.
The government emphasizes autonomous safety, leaving it to each company or business, but when a fatal accident occurs, they blame those companies, and the companies, in turn, blame subcontractors. Despite investing money in personnel and facilities, accidents happen elsewhere. This pattern continues to repeat.
Can increasing the responsibility of the primary contractors and enforcing stricter laws solve the issue? Increasing responsibility may attract attention through pressure, but there could be side effects, leading to unintended outcomes. Leaders benchmark companies with good safety practices, but many risks arise unexpectedly in blind spots, making it difficult to control everything. What about other industrial sites besides large companies with relatively more safety improvement budgets?
2) Fundamentals In 2020, out of 882 accidental deaths, 312 occurred in businesses with less than five employees, 402 in businesses with 5-49 employees, and 53 in businesses with 50-99 employees. In contrast, mid-sized companies with more than 300 employees had 37 deaths. Already, mid-sized and larger companies are investing significant amounts of money, so focusing on further pressuring them should not be the primary focus of industrial accident prevention. Workers in poor working conditions need protection to prevent fatal accidents.
3. Voices from the Field Listening to the voices from the field only through on-site forums cannot be guaranteed to be objective. Can employees in forums where the attendance list is disclosed speak negatively as part of their company? It's a typical form of showmanship. It is recommended to select businesses lacking safety management capabilities and rather listen to voices on missing areas anonymously online.
Improvement costs for safety investments amount to 327.1 billion won, with a total of 1 trillion won in support budget invested over three years, and 200 billion won expected for businesses with less than 300 employees this year, with a total of 500 billion won over the next three years. Most of these funds will likely be used for facility remodeling or replacement, such as replacing old equipment like cargo-type mobile cranes or vehicle-mounted aerial work platforms, and modifying processes required for various manufacturing.
Astronomical amounts of money are required just to install safety protection devices and add sensors. Small businesses will find it difficult to improve further beyond investing in some equipment that helps production. It is essential to legally recommend education and actual use of personal protective equipment to ensure workers' basic health and safety in all work related to construction and manufacturing, not just businesses with less than 50 employees.
For example, to help their livelihoods, women may send their children to school and go to factories to make cards, being exposed to chemicals like acetone for hours without basic masks, chemical gloves, sufficient rest, or ventilation facilities, unaware of the dangers. Many workers will be exposed to risks in much worse conditions than mentioned, unaware of the dangers.
Workers should be made aware of the dangers of chemicals used, and it is right to distribute protective equipment. However, the reality is that gas masks, dust masks, and chemical gloves often cost more than their daily wages.
4. Types and Characteristics of Accidents To reduce accidents, we must examine the types of accidents. Falls (14,406 cases), trips (20,659), being crushed/overturned (2,201), collisions (7,503), being struck by objects (7,248), entanglements (12,894), cuts/lacerations/punctures (10,374). Other major accidents include collapses, electrocutions, explosions/bursts, fires, exposure to extreme temperatures, drowning, chemical spills, etc. Falls are the most significant accidents. For trip accidents, severe trauma cases are rare, and collision cases are not significant except for collisions with heavy equipment. However, being struck by objects or entanglements are dangerous types that can lead to severe trauma and can be sufficiently prevented by detailed analysis and accident prevention. Being struck by objects itself can be considered due to negligence in safety management, and the cause of entanglements often involves communication errors during work, leading to equipment movement due to another worker's misoperation.
Although installing safety sensors, dismantling and working still presents problems, preventing operational errors by having workers operate equipment directly with Hand GOT, Interlock Key, etc., is possible. However, facility investment must be backed up, so small businesses cannot afford it and may use methods like preventing entry to danger zones with safety fences or stopping accidents with emergency stop buttons or levers.
Falls (falling), collisions, and being struck by objects are particularly common in the construction industry, while entanglements, cuts, lacerations, and trips are more common in manufacturing. Over the past three years, 56% of industrial accident fatalities in the construction industry involved subcontractor workers. According to analysis of industrial accident fatalities released by the Ministry of Employment and Labor over the past three years (983 cases, 1,016 deaths), 55.8% of the deceased workers were from subcontractors. As construction projects increase in scale, the proportion of subcontractor workers also increases. Industrial accident deaths are frequent on projects under 300 million won, directly related to costs.
Using subcontractors itself is for cost reduction, making the economy run, so it cannot be entirely condemned. However, the critical point is to supervise whether the costs allocated for safety and health facilities and personal protective equipment within the construction budget are used correctly for workers' health and safety.
Looking at the disaster status of mobile ladders over the past ten years, there were 38,571 accident cases, with 280 fatalities. The highest probability of death was due to loss of balance during work at heights of 2-3.5m using mobile ladders. Thus, work platform ladders were legally introduced and implemented, and additional measures like wearing safety belts and attaching safety hooks to reduce accident rates when falling were taken. However, to use work platform ladders, previously purchased A-type ladders become useless, creating economic problems. Even when wearing safety belts, fixing facilities for attaching hooks takes time and money.
For large companies, without complying with legal requirements and providing work tools, they cannot enter the site, and many managers monitor work under the pretext of safety supervision, ensuring safety. However, small businesses or construction workers building villas or individual houses or repairing buildings often work without safety scaffolds, safety platforms, or fall prevention nets. They do not wear basic personal protective equipment like safety helmets, safety shoes, and safety belts, leading to higher fall accident rates. The leading cause of manufacturing industry deaths, "entanglements," can occur in companies using conveyors, presses, grinders, mixers, injection molding machines, etc., and happen when safety devices are not installed, maintenance or repair work is not performed under shutdown conditions, and no lockout