Participants in a memorial ceremony lay flowers to pay respect to a deceased 23-year-old worker in front of the SPC headquarters in Seoul, Thursday. She died in an accident at a baking factory in Pyeongtaek affiliated with SPC on Saturday. Yonhap

By Lee Hae-rin

Following the death of a young worker at a factory affiliated with food and beverage giant SPC, public outrage against the company has been escalating due to its handling of the incident.

On Saturday, a 23-year-old female employee at the factory in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province died in an accident in which her upper body was caught in a sauce mixer machine. She was supporting her mother and younger sibling by working at the factory, and aimed to run a Paris Baguette store someday.

However, it was revealed that the factory continued to operate two machines on the site of the accident the day after the employee was killed. Also, the factory had another accident a week earlier where an employee's hand was caught in another production line machine but was not sent to the hospital due to their status as a non-regular worker.

To condemn SPC's labor practices, a group of labor unionists and general members of the public staged a memorial ceremony in front of the company's headquarters, as well as one-person protests in front of 1,000 Paris Baguette stores, Thursday. The franchise has over 3,400 branches in the country.

The company has continued to trivialize workers' safety and health, said Yim Min-gyung, a member of the Korean Women Workers Association, which took part in the collective action during the memorial ceremony. About 50 percent of female bakers who become pregnant while employed at SPC experience miscarriages due to excessive labor, and the company put at a disadvantage workers who raise objections by denying them leave, she said.