President orders audit into wage exploitation of Ulsan sanitation workers: “Individual payment records must also be reviewed”

【Financial News, Ulsan = Reporter Choi Su-sang】“I did the same work every month, but just because my contractor changed, my weekly holiday pay disappeared, and lower night-shift pay cut my monthly wage by as much as 1.1 million won...”
Amid Ulsan City’s ongoing audit of proper wage payments to sanitation workers, calls have been made to check not only the total labor costs paid by contractors but also whether each individual worker received the proper wages.
The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions’ National Democratic Union of Workers held a press conference at the Ulsan City Hall press center on the 7th to call for these measures. “Local governments and contractors have so far taken the position that they need only pay the total direct labor costs,” the union said. It called for authorities to “compare each worker’s wage statement with actual payment records in accordance with the guidelines for protecting contracted workers in the public sector introduced last month, and take corrective action if underpayment of proper wages is confirmed.”
The union presented a sanitation worker’s pay statement from a contractor in Ulsan and said that, after the contractor changed, the worker’s gross monthly pay, excluding holiday-work allowances, fell by 1.1 million won—from about 4.11 million won in November last year to about 3 million won in January this year.
The union’s position is that it must be separately verified whether the money was properly paid to each individual worker, even if the full contracted total for direct labor costs was paid.
Ulsan City, for its part, says it has no choice but to apply the existing guidelines, since the audit began on August 31, before the new guidelines were established.
A city official said, “This audit will proceed under the existing guidelines, which are based on total direct labor costs. The case presented by the union may involve other variables, so we will check the facts.”
The audit is being conducted after notification of suspected illegal or improper cases identified in a comprehensive survey conducted by the Ministry of the Interior and Safety at the president’s direction. It covers contracted services for collecting and transporting household waste and cleaning streets in Ulsan’s five districts and counties. The audit was scheduled to run through the end of September, but its period was extended to the end of this month because some matters require further review.


[email protected] Choi Su-sang Reporter