The Right to Stop Work

Han Sua tried to take off her vest. Doyun stopped her. "If you take it off suddenly, it might get processed as an unregistered departure."

"But if I keep it on, I'm a pallet."

"That's why we need to set an order first."

Seojin stood at the threshold of the warehouse and wrote down three things, separated. Han Sua's actual name, her temporary observer registration, the scanner's reading of her as empty pallet 1. Three records attached to the same person, and none of them matched.

Baek Gijun was staring at the manager's screen. The shipping delay had grown from 47.1 minutes to 52 minutes. The number no longer looked like a coincidence, but Seojin didn't attach meaning to it yet. The longer the delay grew, the faster Baek Gijun's fingers moved.

"Turn off the scanner for now," Han Sua said.

"If I turn it off, the inventory close won't go through."

"A person got logged as inventory and you're worried about closing?"

"If the close doesn't happen, the day's wages for everyone who worked won't get paid either."

At that, the workers all turned to look at Baek Gijun at once. It sounded like a threat, but it was also a real constraint. Wages were paid after the shipping close and attendance were finalized. If the system stopped, Kim Munsik would get his money even later.

Seojin asked, "Is there a procedure for the right to stop work?"

Baek Gijun's face hardened. "There is. Anyone can request it for a serious hazard. But if it's abused, the vendor contract could take a hit..."

Han Sua cut him off. "Is it abuse or not? You've seen a person get scanned as a pallet right here, and you still can't tell?"

Kim Munsik raised his hand. "I request a stop."

Raman raised his hand too. Park Sunyoung hesitated. "If we stop, we might not get paid today."

Han Sua didn't move closer to him. Grabbing his wrist to convince him would only become another kind of force. "You don't have to if you don't want to. But if someone else ends up staying behind for you later, that wasn't your choice either."

Park Sunyoung raised his hand without taking off his gloves. Nguyen Thi Lan peeled the name label off her vest, held it in her hand, and raised it too. Oh Seungpil raised his as well. Once someone with a permanent employee number raised a hand, the claim that this was only a day laborers' problem got weaker.

Doyun stood in front of the emergency stop button. "Confirming requesters. Kim Munsik, Raman, Park Sunyoung, Nguyen Thi Lan, Oh Seungpil, witnessed by Han Sua."

"I'm a requester too," Han Sua said.

"Registering as an observer is dangerous."

"Still, under my own name. Not temporary observer. Han Sua."

Seojin wrote it down that way. Han Sua, work stoppage requested under her real name. Separate from the temporary observer registration.

Baek Gijun brought over the work stoppage form. The company logo sat at the top of the form, and the reason field was narrow. It was set up to fit the hazard description in three lines. Seojin attached a new sheet. Supplementary reasons. A scanner reading a person as an empty pallet, failure to clock out, a double clock-in stamp, possible wage loss.

"If you write outside the form, it won't be accepted," Baek Gijun said.

"It doesn't all fit inside the form."

"Then summarize it."

"If you summarize it, the person disappears."

At that, the workers went quiet. Baek Gijun held the pen but didn't sign. The shipping delay alerts kept going off. Calls from the center director, calls from the vendor foreman, calls from the client contact. Baek Gijun didn't answer any of them.

Han Sua said to him, "Manager, if you don't sign right now, who's going to sign? If a day laborer signs, their contract gets cut. If a permanent employee signs, they get disciplined. I'm not an employee, so you'll just ignore me."

"If I sign, the company takes a loss."

"Choose between the company's loss and people going home."

Baek Gijun didn't hold out long. He didn't sign the first page of the stoppage request, but instead pulled a different envelope from the back drawer. It was an envelope from Daon Life Safety's HR department.

"Seojin, there's already an official notice from Officer Oh Jeongho, and you're currently barred from field work. If I put your name on this request, the company gets hit immediately."

Inside the envelope was a contract termination notice. The recipient was Yun Seojin. The reason listed was unauthorized field involvement and external risk.

Doyun stepped forward. "Are you kidding me."

Baek Gijun didn't look at Doyun. "I wish I were. If I hand this over, Seojin can step out of this. If I sign that request, there's nowhere left for our company to step out to."

Seojin didn't take the notice. "Recording that a contract termination notice was presented in place of a stoppage signature."

The number of requesters kept growing, but the signing order became a problem. If Kim Munsik signed first, it might look like a personal grievance. If Oh Seungpil signed first, he might get treated as a representative of permanent employees. If Han Sua signed first, she might get painted as an outside agitator stirring things up.

Seojin didn't propose an order. "Each of you write one sentence about why you're signing, and we file them all at the same time."

Kim Munsik wrote, "Because I can't clock out." Raman wrote, "Because my name isn't a pallet." Park Sunyoung started to write, "Because a person comes first even unpaid," then stopped. It felt too big a claim. He wrote it again. "Because I have to go home." Nguyen Thi Lan wrote, "Do not use my QR code for someone else." Oh Seungpil wrote, "Against records where only permanent employees clock out." Han Sua wrote, "Refusing unpaid attendance processed as temporary observer."

Each sentence was small and different. That made it better. It wasn't a single unified slogan.

Baek Gijun rested his hand on the signature line. "If this goes through, the vendor is going to push back. Starting next month, you won't be able to get people here."

Han Sua said, "It's not that you can't get people. It's that you can't call people in under these conditions."

"Sua, you're talking pretty lightly to people whose livelihoods are on the line."

"My livelihood is on the line too. That's why I'm saying this."

Baek Gijun fell silent for a moment after hearing that. For the first time, his expression showed he wasn't just seeing Han Sua as an outside activist or a nuisance witness. But then his phone rang. It was the vendor's CEO. Baek Gijun answered on speaker.

"Manager, if you file the stoppage, we can't cover today's labor costs. Tell the kids. Just a little more and it's done."

Han Sua spoke immediately. "They're not kids. They have names."

Baek Gijun didn't turn off the speaker. "Say it by name. Kim Munsik, Raman, Park Sunyoung, Nguyen Thi Lan. Four people failed to clock out. Han Sua was also registered incorrectly as a temporary observer."

The other end of the line went quiet. Saying the names came with a cost. The vendor's CEO couldn't say "kids" anymore.

Meanwhile the scanner kept updating the empty pallet 1 label. The count of subjects went from 4 to 5. Han Sua had fully entered the count. Seojin recorded the change in the number of empty pallet subjects on top of the work stoppage request. The request stopped being a simple complaint and became a record of the system's response.

Doyun opened the emergency stop button cover again. This time he didn't tear off the seal number, but photographed the seal as it was. Whoever broke the seal might become the one held responsible.

"Breaking the seal needs to go in as a supplement too," Seojin said.

Baek Gijun held out his hand. "I'll break it."

"Don't break it alone."

"I'm the one in charge here."

"If you make it one person's responsibility, you end up with one person missing again."

Baek Gijun's hand stopped. That sentence was the core of this whole incident. The responsibility he'd learned at the company was one person stamping a seal and being done with it. Here, that one person could become an empty pallet.

In the end, three people checked and cut the seal together. Baek Gijun, Oh Seungpil, Han Sua. Seojin put the cut pieces into an envelope. Doyun got ready to press the button. He still hadn't pressed it. The field for management action on the work stoppage request was still empty.

After putting the seal fragments into the envelope, Seojin wrote three names on the outside. Baek Gijun, Oh Seungpil, Han Sua. Beside her own name, Han Sua added, "Disputing unpaid temporary observer status."

"Do you really have to write that?" Baek Gijun asked.

"Yes. That way later I don't end up recorded as someone who walked in for free and interfered on site. I stay recorded as someone who was registered incorrectly."

Baek Gijun couldn't argue with that. He often called the people on site family, but the word family didn't appear anywhere in the contract. The contract only had the vendor, the code, and the payment terms.

Just as the work stoppage request was nearly finished, the vendor foreman showed up. He walked in without even a helmet on and said, "Who's stopping work? Kim Munsik, you don't come in starting tomorrow."

Kim Munsik started to rise from his seat. Doyun held him back with a hand. Han Sua spoke first. "That's being recorded right now. I'm noting it as a retaliatory statement against a work stoppage requester."

The foreman looked Han Sua up and down. "And who are you."

"Han Sua. Incorrectly registered as a temporary observer. Write it down."

The foreman looked at Baek Gijun. For the first time, Baek Gijun didn't take the foreman's side. "No retaliatory statements from now on. The right to stop work is being exercised."

"Manager, if shipping falls through, our contract is done too."

"A person got scanned as a pallet first. That comes before that."

Baek Gijun's words weren't smooth. That made them sound more like something from the shop floor. He still wasn't a good person. He was calculating losses. But a person had entered into that calculation now.

The vendor foreman shut his mouth. While he couldn't speak, Park Sunyoung signed the last field on the request. Once the person who'd been hesitating signed, the others checked their own names too. The right to stop work stopped being a slogan and went onto paper.

Before pressing the emergency stop button, Baek Gijun pulled out the projected refrigerated goods disposal sheet. The item names and quantities packed the page tight. Chicken breast, salad, milk, frozen lunch boxes. The projected disposal cost was larger than the workers' daily wages. Looking at that sheet alone, not pressing the button seemed like the rational choice.

Seojin made another sheet next to it. Names of those who'd failed to clock out, hours lost, wages lost, transportation costs, effects on their next shift. Many of the amount fields were blank. Where she didn't know, she wrote that she didn't know. Placed side by side with the other sheet, Baek Gijun could no longer speak while holding only the disposal sheet.

Han Sua said, "Now you can see which side is actually the loss."

Baek Gijun didn't answer. Instead he wrote "not yet confirmed" above the disposal projection sheet. Whether all the refrigerated goods would be discarded or only some delayed was still unknown. The company's loss was also not yet confirmed. The structure where only the human loss always got pushed through as if it were already confirmed had started to shake, just a little.

The vendor foreman looked at that sheet and said, "Who's going to compensate for all this."

Kim Munsik answered quietly. "We always did. Every single time, we were the ones."

No one made a joke right after that. Doyun rested his hand on the button, and Seojin wrote down the time the request was filed. 3:17 a.m. The same time as Kim Munsik's failed clock out. This time, that same time became the time of a request to stop.

The vendor foreman tried to speak to Kim Munsik separately. Doyun stepped between them. "No individual interviews. A work stoppage request is in progress."

"He's my employee."

Kim Munsik looked directly at the foreman for the first time. "I am your employee, that's true, but right now I'm not going to talk alone."

It wasn't a long statement. But it was the first moment Kim Munsik had spoken his own choice out loud himself. Han Sua didn't cut in. Instead she wrote beside the request, refusal of individual interview, spoken by the person himself.

Baek Gijun said to the foreman, "If you want to interview him, the worker himself, a coworker witness, and a company manager all have to be present. Right now, the site stoppage comes first."

The foreman gave a hollow laugh but backed off. The count of empty pallet subjects on the display board dropped from 5 to 4, then went back up to 5. Kim Munsik's own words had pushed the system back for a moment, but it meant the procedure still wasn't over.

Seojin didn't miss that change. His own words alone weren't enough, a formal stoppage was still needed. The sentence she recorded decided the next action.

Next to the emergency stop button there was also a field for the person responsible for restart. Multiple people had confirmed the stoppage, but the restart field was set up to be filled by only one person. Seojin looked at that field and said to Baek Gijun, "Turning it back on might be more dangerous than stopping it."

Baek Gijun didn't leave the restart responsibility field blank. He wrote "supplementary" instead. The conditions for restart were separating out the names of people, lifting the clock out hold, and confirming the empty pallet shipping hold. None of it was finished yet. So the next responsibility was already set even before the button got pressed.

Once the restart conditions were written down, the vendor foreman protested again. "Then we can't start the line today." Baek Gijun answered, "As long as a person is still logged as an object, we can't start it." That statement wasn't a resolve so much as a condition. And because it was a condition, it could go into the document.

Kim Munsik pressed the blue stamp on the back of his hand next to that condition. It wasn't a signature. It was the mark left from clocking in twice, and this time he turned it back into evidence for the stop request. It didn't fade.

The shipping delay time on the display board stopped moving. It stayed at 52 minutes. The scanner paused too, for a moment. Han Sua, still wearing her vest, said,

"You can't send a person out with that piece of paper."

Beneath the contract termination notice in Baek Gijun's hand, the work stoppage request was visible. The signature line was still empty.