| A person receives a rapid antigen test for COVID-19 at a testing center near Seoul Station, Friday. Yonhap |
By Park Jae-hyuk
Major conglomerates in Korea are struggling to prevent the shutdown of their manufacturing plants, amid the continuous spread of the coronavirus in their production lines nationwide, according to industry officials, Friday.
As Korea's daily COVID-19 infections began to exceed 50,000 this month, domestic conglomerates recently resumed tightening their quarantine measures, having their staff work from home and avoid physical meetings.
However, the conglomerates are still exposed to the risk of a potential setback in their production, given that most of their quarantine measures apply only to their office workers.
Hyundai Motor, for example, temporarily halted seat production in its Ulsan factory, Thursday, after more than 40 workers tested positive for the disease.
Although the carmaker has told more than half of its office workers to work from home and banned private meetings of employees, its factory workers have had no choice but to be physically present on the production lines.
“We have issued quarantine measures for our production lines in compliance with government policies,” a Hyundai Motor spokesman said. “We disinfect our production lines every day and take the body temperatures of everyone entering our factories.”
Samsung Electronics is subject to similar problems, as double-digit cases of COVID-19 infections have occurred recently in its device solutions division.
The division, which is in charge of semiconductor production, began to prohibit physical meetings and training sessions completely from Wednesday, for the first time in five months, recommending its employees to refrain from going on business trips as well.
In order to prevent the spread of the coronavirus among the factory workers, Samsung ordered them to vary their commute times, while stopping the operation of the company-owned shuttle buses.
The factory workers, however, as yet lack alternatives for getting to and from their workplaces, as well as for being physically present on the production line.
“We are developing plans to brace for contingencies,” a Samsung Electronics spokesman said.
SK and LG, both of which told more office staff to work from home, have not found a fundamental solution for their factory workers yet either. The manufacturing workers have been given self-test kits, which have become scarce amid the skyrocketing number of infections in Korea.
POSCO has ordered those who were in close contact with an infected person to work from home for seven days, even if they test negative.
Hyundai Heavy Industries has instructed more workers to work from home and adopted staggered working hours to minimize contact among workers. Hankook Tire & Technology has told employees with symptoms to undergo self-antigen tests at the company nurse's office.