SPC Group is receiving further criticism for sent two boxes of bread to the funeral home of worker who died after being caught in a sauce mixer.
SPC Group is a giant in the Korean food industry and the parent company of the global bakery chain “Paris Baguette” — the most popular bakery brand of SPC Group, which was established in 1988 and has over 4,000 stores globally.
However, a young female factory worker, age 23, passed away on October 15 after her body got trapped in a sauce mixer at SPL Bakery industry, a subsidiary of the SPC Group that produces cold dough, bread, and sandwiches for Paris Baguette that are then delivered to retailers.
The victim’s body wasn’t found until the next day. The factory manager instructed all workers to carry on producing bread despite the fact that the area was still covered in blood and body parts after the event. He simply attempted to conceal the mess by covering the mixer with a white cloth.
The investigation revealed that the industry had seven machines without automatic protection devices, and only two were equipped with mechanical protection devices. The Food Factory’s Safety Standards Document found that the regular number of operators for the mixers was a two-person crew and that one person operating them was a violation. The other partner could push the emergency button and stop the mixer in an emergency. However, she was the only one working the mixer that day, and the other partner was on assignment at another location due to a lack of company staff. The company could have avoided the disaster if it had taken proper safety measures. However, SPC chose to lie for the company’s reputation, hiding that the employee’s death was due to the company being understaffed and operating the machine alone.
After the incident, the supervisor reported the accident to the relevant labor department, and they issued a stop-work request through the Ministry of Labor for the seven machines without automatic protection. Still, the two machines with protection continued to work. At the worker’s funeral, SPC Group sent two boxes of bread from Paris Baguette to her family as a condolence gift, which ultimately inspired a spray of anger and boycott in Korean society and various Twitter(#BoycottParisBaguette) and other social media to launch a boycott of Paris Baguette.
SPC Group could have avoided such things completely by improving the safety of the machines and regulating the production process. After such an incident, SPC Group should sincerely admit its mistake, offer condolences and compensation to the families of the female workers, and upgrade the relevant machines to prevent such incidents from happening again. However, they took very wrong measures, lying to public in order to protect the company’s reputation, operating irregularly and squeezing the employees, and finally, the wrong way of condolence and compensation, which thoroughly angered the public and triggered a boycott of the company’s brands instead.
