PHILIPPINES senator Pia Cayetano has accused South Korea’s ambassador Choi Joong-kyung of threatening the senate with “deep and far-reaching effects within and beyond the boundaries of the Philippines” if it pursues an investigation into deaths at the shipyard owned by Korean company Hanjin Heavy Industries and Construction-Philippines at Subic Bay.
In a letter to senate president Juan Ponce Enrile dated December 23 last year, the ambassador warned: “The tremendous political influence of the senate means that its actions may have fatal effects [on] the existence of an actor in the private sector. The possibility that HHIC-Philippines may be an object of a senate inquiry could generate substantial and negative repercussions.” Reference to effects “beyond the boundaries of the Philippines” may be interpreted as a threat to the interests of overseas Filipino workers – more than 80,000 of whom were in South Korea as of 2007.
With 15 workers having been killed in accidents by last November, there were serious concerns that the company was cutting corners on health and safety. After Jose Vener Gil died when a 250-kilogramme air-conditioning unit fell on him on November 26, Pia Cayteano asked rhetorically: “The Hanjin shipyard has virtually become a modern-day killing field, but has any Hanjin official been jailed or even charged in court?”
The previous fatality had occurred just six days earlier, although the company claimed this was due to a “vehicular accident”. The 13th death happened last July, when a worker was hit by a steel beam. On that occasion, the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority ordered one of the assembly shops to halt operations for seven days, just a month after a similar order had been issued against the company’s construction arm as a result of yet another loss of life
Following Gil’s death, his employer, a sub-contractor called Philnorkor, had its certificate of registration and tax exemption cancelled, effectively barring it from working in the yard. Critics maintain that Hanjin must bear some responsibility for the behaviour of its sub-contractors. At the time of the July death, it emerged that there had been 4,300 accidents since 2006 – many attributed to health and safety lapses by the company. Although the accident-rate had declined from 3,273 in 2006 to 1,120 in 2007-08, there were nine deaths in the latter period – one for every 124 accidents. The Subic shipyard covers 375 hectares and employs 15,000 workers, but has no hospital facilities.
According to Ernesto Arellano, president of the National Union of Building and Construction Workers: “To Hanjin management, health and safety is a last priority. Laxity in observance and inadequate safety equipment are reasons for the frequent accidents. This is illustrated by one accident where a Korean driver used Filipino workers as ‘rope’ instead of an actual rope to secure steel pipes as they were being transported. When the vehicle negotiated a bend, the heavy pipes rolled over the workers, seriously injuring one, who later died. His parents observed that he could have been saved if had he been brought immediately to hospital. The law requires that, given the number of workers it employs, Hanjin should maintain an infirmary or clinic with a full time physician.”
Arellano’s union has started to organise the workers at Subic. The organising drive has not been problem-free. “Management got wind of the union activities and dismissed all the union leaders except four.” Suspected activists have also been transferred, demoted and barred from the site.
In the meantime, there have been two further deaths. On January 23, the employee of sub-contractor succumbed to massive head injuries after a door fell on him. Two days, later a Korean foreman playing basketball ran in front of the forklift truck that been detailed to remove the makeshift basketball ring.
Hanjin is preparing to build a second shipyard in Misamis Oriental province on the island of Mindanao which, it says, will be the second largest in the world. Ernesto Arellano hope that lessons will have been learned from the health and safety problems at Subic. But he is not optimistic.
