<Anchor>
Ahead of the Chuseok holiday, we delivered the news yesterday (17th) that more than 4,000 courier drivers across the country have decided to refuse to sort packages.
The shipment volume exploded due to Corona 19 and Chuseok, and it is said that almost half of the business hours are spent on sorting jobs that are not even paid.
Reporter Lee Seong-hoon heard the stories of the courier drivers.
<Reporter>
Early in the morning, the delivery company's distribution center is crowded with people doing sorting.
Boxes that are constantly pouring are sorted by delivery zone.
[As a Chuseok gift, I used seaweed, Korean confectionery, cooking oil, meat, and then children's toys, which increased by 20%.]
Sorting started at 7 am.
Normally, I even finished loading the vehicle in the morning, but even though I skipped lunch, it wasn't until 1:30pm that the work was finished.
[(Can't
ship
everything?) It's
just a matter of time
.] The
shipment volume explodes ahead of Chuseok, so there are often times when
it's impossible to load all
of the items at once.
[Kim Se-Gon/Courier: If you usually have 300 (quantity), you can't know during holidays.
There can be 500 or 600.
Some drivers do it late, some do it until four o'clock.
(Four o'clock in the morning?) Right.]
Courier drivers spend almost half of their business hours on sorting, but because they are charged a fee depending on the number of deliveries, sorting is not recognized as working hours.
[Park Heung-jae/Courier: Because income is generated only when shipping.
(When sorting) It's hard because I don't have any income.
Both physically and mentally.
That's why I feel unfair.]
Since the coronavirus, the average working hours per week of courier workers has exceeded 71 hours, and this year alone, 7 people have been overworked.
Eight out of 10 courier workers feared the thought that they could overwork themselves.