Litigation for reimbursement of monthly fees, ruling against construction company
Items included from the time of bidding ‘wage nature’
Won Hee-ryong insists on ‘payment by union force’
A ‘Joint Investigation Team’ was also launched targeting the construction unions.
On the 21st, Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport Won Hee-ryong gave a briefing on measures to eradicate unfair practices at construction sites in the briefing room of the Seoul Government Complex. Reporter Han Soo-bin
On the 21st, Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport Won Hee-ryong announced the ‘measures to eradicate illegal and unfair acts at construction sites’ and expressed a negative position on the court’s judgment that ‘the monthly fee for tower cranes is in the nature of wages’. Even if it is customarily paid at construction sites and has a similar nature to wages, there is no change in the fact that the monthly payment is paid because of the union’s coercion or threat.
Regarding the court’s judgment that there is an A-B relationship between a construction company’s subcontractor and a tower crane pilot, Minister Won Hee-ryong’s Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs still adheres to the position that the union is ‘A’. The government launched a ‘government joint investigation team’ targeting the construction unions.
According to the construction industry on the 22nd, the Gwangju High Court held an appeal against 16 tower crane pilots on the 16th in an appeal suit against 16 tower crane pilots, saying, “Please pay the monthly wages you received,” from a construction company A, which performs subcontracting work for rebar and concrete for a general construction company. In the same way as in the first trial, the plaintiffs ruled against the plaintiff. Won Hee-ryong The Court of Appeal judged that the monthly fee for tower cranes, which the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport consistently pointed out as ‘illegal’, had the nature of wages.
According to the documents and testimonies submitted to the court as evidence, these tower crane pilots have been receiving about 3 million won a month in the name of overtime allowance (OT fee) and monthly wages. Their monthly wages were originally included in the bidding price from the time they participated in the construction bidding. In the specifications issued by the prime contractor to the bidding companies, ‘monthly expenses and OT expenses according to T/C installation and operation in the region’ are specified. In other words, when the subcontractor writes the bid price, it means that from the beginning, the monthly fee payment schedule was included.
The monthly stipend was also used as an allowance for tower crane pilots to do non-duty work. The pilot who came out as a witness in the first trial also stated that “there was no reason to do the rebar wire assembly work itself if the monthly fee was not paid.”
The general opinion of the construction industry is that the practice of paying a monthly fee to tower crane pilots at actual sites has a great purpose for ‘shortening the construction period’. Paying a monthly fee does not mean that the construction will be carried out quickly, but the ‘monthly fee’ is the money paid by the site manager to shorten the construction period by instructing the tower crane pilot what not to do due to safety rules and paying for labor.
Normally, it takes at least 4 to 5 days to a maximum of one week to dismantle one layer of formwork after pouring at a construction site. In some cases, a ‘monthly fee’ is used as compensation for violating safe work principles, such as requesting a
In a phone call, the manager of the construction site A said, “At first, they gave me hundreds of thousands of won as a cost of labor, but it is true that it has changed like money that I have to pay as a matter of course.” Instead of giving them a job, they sometimes ask them to do other things besides piloting, and they have a win-win effect, such as asking for unreasonable favors.”
However, the government is using the practice of paying ‘tower crane monthly fee’ as a means to drive construction unions into corruption. All the ills in the construction site are starting from here. Rather than dealing with the fundamental problem that has arisen from the practice of monthly fees, it is also showing that it is focusing on publicizing the maximum amount of hundreds of millions of won per pilot.
The construction union refuted, saying, “The eradication of the monthly fee for tower cranes was what we requested first.” The Tower Crane Subcommittee of the Federation of Construction Industries of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions decided to completely eradicate bribery on two occasions in 2016, and sent official letters to seek cooperation from the site, but failed to eradicate the practices at individual sites. In other words, there is no difference between the positions of the construction union and the government on the ‘monthly fee for tower cranes’. In the end, it means that the practice of paying monthly fees for tower cranes can disappear only when construction companies have to eradicate various illegal and evasive acts to advance the construction period.
The construction union said, “The monthly fee is a practice that occurred on site while the prime contractor was avoiding the management responsibility as a user.” It is the surest way to eradicate it.”