Reasons for Proposal
According to the Occupational Safety and Health Act, a place of business with 50 or more full-time employees shall appoint a safety officer and health officer to assist the business owner or person in charge of management and provide guidance and advice to supervisors regarding technical matters concerning safety and health, and a large place of business with 300 or more full-time employees shall appoint a safety officer and health officer to be exclusively in charge of safety and health management duties.
The current Act on Special Measures for the Deregulation of Corporate activities allows business owners to entrust the duties of safety and health officers to a management agency regardless of the size of the place of business and as a result, even large places of business with 300 or more employees are entrusting their safety and health management duties to agencies.
However, it is necessary for large places of business to directly hire workers to perform safety and health management duties for the following reasons.
First, safety and health management duties are directly associated with the lives and safety of workers and rather than having such duties performed irregularly by an externally commissioned agency, it is advisable to have safety and health officers hired directly by an enterprise to manage hazards and risks on a regular basis. This may also increase the effectiveness of disaster prevention.
Second, a series of safety and health accidents in the recent past, including the Samsung Heavy Industries crane collapse (May 1, 2017), has heightened public concern regarding safety and health accidents at places of business. This makes it necessary to actively suppress the occurrence of industrial accidents by further strengthening the safety and health management duties of large places of business.
Accordingly, the Amendment deletes the provision allowing the duties of safety and health officers to be externally commissioned to an agency and, in line with the intent of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, prescribes that large places of business with 300 or more employees shall directly hire their own safety and health officers to carry out hazard and risk prevention activities on a regular basis, thereby aiming to strengthen disaster prevention activities at industrial sites.
Details
A. Delete the provision allowing the duties of safety officers and health officers to be commissioned to management agencies by business owners (Article 40, paragraph 1, subparagraphs 1 and 2)
B. Delete relevant provisions in accordance with the restriction on the commissioning of safety officer and health officer duties to management agencies (Article 40, paragraph 2, subparagraph 1 and paragraph 3, subparagraph 1)
