According to the industrial accident statistics of the Ministry of Employment and Labor, the number of workers in Korea injured on the job who needed medical care for more than 4 days as of 2019 was 109,242, of which 2,020 were occupational fatalities. This means that about 300 people are injured and 5.5 people die a day on average, which ranks among the top of the OECD industrial accident fatality rate statistics, and shows that the problem of industrial accidents in Korea is quite serious. 

To solve the problem of industrial accidents that are not easily reduced, efforts at the workplace level to reduce industrial accidents should be urged, and it will be necessary to provide incentives for them. One such recent effort was that the Act defined those who inflict serious harm on workers, etc., by neglecting safety and health measures in the implementation of national contracts as inappropriate business entities and restricted them from eligibility for bidding, but this alone is not enough to urge efforts by each business site to prevent numerous “small disasters” from occurring at business sites. 

Therefore, this amendment aims to increase the responsibility for industrial accidents at each workplace and to prepare incentives to reduce industrial accidents by considering “the number, etc., of industrial accident occurrences” published pursuant to Article 10 of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, such as workplaces with annual industrial accident rates equal to or higher than the average accident rate of the same industry by size, in the successful bidder selection process for state contract competitive bidding (Article 10 (2)).

Article 10