중대재해처벌 등에 관한 법률 시행에 따른 사회복지조직의 대응방안

Abstract

The Serious Accidents Punishment Act was expanded to apply to all workplaces with five or more employees on January 27, 2024. This paper examines the major legal issues surrounding senior employment support agencies, especially senior clubs, which are social welfare facilities particularly vulnerable to major accidents, and proposes organizational countermeasures for preventing major accidents. To this end, this paper analyses the main contents of the Serious Accidents Punishment Act through academic literatures, and reviews various legal principles and key issues related to the implementation of the Act on senior clubs through the case laws. This paper aims to seek effective preventive measures and responses to the accidents that occur in senior clubs. The research revealed that the characteristics of senior clubs include continuous increasing trend in the number of elderly participants in senior job programs, full-time employments more than three hundred employees, various types of business operations such as public service, social service, and private business, and continuous occurrence of dangerous accidents. The key issues of the Serious Accidents Punishment Act relevant to the senior clubs are identifying an employee with legal responsibility, types of business subject to the Act, establishment of a dedicated occupational health and safety board appropriate to the type of business, a joint penal provision, and punitive damages. This paper proposes the following responsive measures for senior clubs in response to the implementation of the Act; changing employees’ perspective towards the Serious Accidents Punishment Act, building a health and safety management system reflecting characteristics of senior clubs, utilizing scientific risk management techniques in establishing a health and safety management system and support and management from the Ministry of Health and Welfare as well as local governments.