Heads of 22 construction associations, which are members of the Federation of Construction Associations(FCA) hold a joint media session to call on the government to normalize the construction industry by boosting the public construction costs and easing the minimum working hours, among others.The event took place on May 11 at the Korea Press Center in Seoul.(Photo: FCA)

The Federation of Construction Associations held a joint media conference with its member associations on May 16 at Korea Press Center in downtown Seoul. Twenty-two member construction associations in attendance.
They announced proposals industry to the government to solve current problems facing the construction, and appeal to the entire nation, in a statement signed by 28,411 members of the associations for the sake of 2 million construction workers across the country. They will also hold a demonstration in front of the National Assembly in Yeouido, Seoul, on May 31. They asked for government support in normalizing the industry.
Close to 40 percent of government construction projects that the construction associations complete end up losing money. They demanded public projects be based on real costs by reviewing inflation and living costs across the country, citing that the profit ratio for the construction associations in general fell around to 10 percent in the past decade. The profit ratio against sales dropped to 0.6 percent from 5 percent in the past 10 years with the results being increased replacement with cheap foreign workers to fill the vacancies left by domestic workers for better pays. The number of illegal foreign workers in the country increased to 224,000 in 2016 from 211,000 in 2014.
In the past 10 years, 1,500 construction associations working on public construction projects closed operations leaving 45,000 workers out of job, they said.
They also pointed out that low profits for the construction associations aggravated financial conditions for subcontractors, construction equipment makers and other related companies hurting the local economies.
They said the project costs have been reduced more than 15 percent in the past 15 years, while the successful bidding prices fell 17 percent in the same period. If nothing is done, many construction associations would not try to win the public construction projects and they would continue to have losses in operations and go out of business in the end, they feared.
The construction associations want the government to boost the successful bidding ratio by 10 percent in its screening for the qualification of the bidding firms and the bidding price deliberation and leave the public construction projects valued at from 10 billion won to 30 billion won alone not subjected to the market standard price.
They also wanted the working hours left to the companies so that they can fix them flexibly depending on their conditions in order to avoid the confusion over the working hours set by the government.
They also called on the government to consider the wage levels for the employees when setting the construction project costs.
The construction industry shares 16 percent of GDP, making huge contribution to the national economic development so far.
They sent the petition for normalization of the construction costs to create jobs and national stability signed by 28,4122 FCA member construction associations to the National Assembly and the letter of plea declared to the entire nation.