“The tinkering of apartments is serious”

A crack found at a construction site in an apartment in Daegu (left) and its temporary treatment with floorbond (right). Courtesy of the Right to Know Union

Recently, A, who oversaw the flooring of an apartment in a new town in Paju, Gyeonggi-do “tinkered” a bad pipe at the orders of a contractor. Due to a defect in the previous indoor plumbing process, the pipe was exposed outside the wall, and as instructed by the contractor, A roughly covered the protruding pipe with silicone. There have been frequent leaks in the apartment since construction was completed.

B, who laid the flooring in an apartment in Daegu, received similar instructions. Even though a long crack formed in the cement floor before the flooring was laid, the site manager told him to “just cover it with flooring adhesive” and did not use a separate sealant for repairs.

Choi Wu-yeong, head of the flooring chapter of the Rights Seeking Union, was a speaker at a conference titled, “What Is the Reality of Flooring Work?” held by the Rights Seeking Union at the National Assembly in Yeouido, Seoul on October 31. He shared these cases saying, “Everyone knows about ‘boneless’ apartments, but no one knows what goes on in indoor construction.”

Choi argued that the complex employment relationship in the flooring industry led to the evasion of employer responsibilities, illegal labor contracts, and the non-payment of wages and retirement mutual aid schemes.

Flooring is carried out by construction companies hiring flooring companies, which in turn hires a site manager. The site manager, in turn, assigns the work to individual flooring workers.

Although the workers work under the direction of the company, their employment relationships all differ. Sometimes they are paid by the flooring company and sometimes by the site manager. Even though they have a labor contract with the flooring company and receive a salary, they often pay the 3.3% business income tax like sole proprietors. In some cases, the site manager pays the business income tax all at once.

Violations of the Labor Standards Act and illegal subcontracting lead to job insecurity, and if employment is uncertain, workers cannot refuse unfair instructions for tasks, such as tinkering.

“If there’s a problem, all operations at the site should be suspended. But if you say no when they tell you to just cover it up, you’ll get fired on the spot,” Choi said.

Bak, a site manager of a flooring contractor, also spoke at the conference Tuesday and said, “I once signed a labor contract where the worker’s signature was forged by another worker upon orders from the flooring company, and it is common practice for other managers to do that at the direction of the company.” As for why companies continued to fail to pay the retirement mutual aid installments, Bak said, “The construction company and the flooring contractor determines, in advance, the number of workers necessary for the task calculated into a number of workdays or hours, for which the mutual aid installments are paid. If they set the number at 500, then even if it takes 600-700 days to do the work, the number will still be 500 (on paper).”