CJ Logistics "If Delivery Points Force Exclusion of Workers' Industrial Accident Coverage, We Will Not Renew Contracts"

Sequential Deployment of 4,000 Sorting Support Personnel by Q1 Next Year
Appropriate Parcel Workload Also Being Calculated with External Experts

[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Yu Je-hoon] CJ Logistics has decided to sanction delivery agency offices that coerce or pressure delivery workers to apply for exclusion from industrial accident insurance. Additionally, to address the main cause of delivery workers' long hours and intense labor?product sorting tasks?4,000 support personnel will be sequentially deployed by the first quarter of next year.

CJ Logistics announced on the 19th that if delivery agency offices, which are the contracting parties of delivery workers, coerce or pressure workers to apply for exclusion from industrial accident insurance, such actions will be considered fraudulent and the company will not renew contracts. This is part of the 'Comprehensive Protection Measures for Delivery Drivers and Delivery Workers' announced by CJ Logistics last October.

Under current law, delivery agency offices contracting with special employment workers such as delivery workers must report employment by the 15th of the following month based on the day labor was provided. Upon reporting employment, workers are automatically enrolled in industrial accident insurance, but they can opt out by submitting an exclusion application themselves.

As a result of a full survey conducted by CJ Logistics targeting about 20,000 delivery drivers affiliated with over 2,000 delivery agency offices nationwide, the industrial accident insurance enrollment rate was 27.0%, the exclusion application rate was 27.9%, and the non-reporting rate was 45.1%. Although this is higher than the industry average enrollment rate of 18.5%, the company believes it still falls short of social expectations.

Accordingly, starting next year, CJ Logistics will regularly monitor whether delivery agency offices are coercing or unilaterally processing exclusion applications for industrial accident insurance for delivery workers, and will add this as a condition for contract termination with the agency offices (alongside issues such as product theft and embezzlement of delivery fees). Generally, delivery agency offices renew contracts with the company every two years.

Furthermore, to reduce the work intensity of delivery drivers, CJ Logistics plans to complete the deployment of 4,000 support personnel for product sorting tasks by the first quarter of next year and is currently discussing cost-sharing issues with individual delivery agency offices. Since the approximately 2,000 delivery agencies contracted with CJ Logistics have diverse management structures, it is difficult to set a uniform cost-sharing ratio.

Additionally, CJ Logistics has selected an external professional institution to calculate the appropriate daily delivery volume for delivery workers. Once the results are obtained by the end of the year, the company plans to recommend workload adjustments to delivery workers. The company will also shorten the cycle of free health checkups provided to all delivery workers to one year starting next year and encourage additional examinations and health management for those identified as high-risk.

CJ Logistics will also establish a 10 billion KRW scale mutual cooperation fund by 2022. Separate from the existing support for delivery drivers’ children’s tuition and condolence money, this fund will be used for emergency livelihood support, improving job satisfaction, and enhancing welfare. A CJ Logistics official stated, "We have prepared and announced practical protection measures so that delivery drivers and delivery workers can work in a more stable environment," adding, "We will faithfully implement these measures according to field conditions and transparently disclose progress directly to the public."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.