hankyoreh

Apr. 29. (provided by Emart)

By Park Seung-heon, staff reporter

The labor union of Emart, a major retail chain, is calling for the work of sales staff at the company to be recognized as “emotional labor.”

In January, Homeplus, another major retailer, signed on to a collective agreement acknowledging the emotional labor of its employees and prepared a manual that instructs them how to respond to abusive language and violence from customers. The movement to recognize the emotional labor of employees in the distribution and service industry as being, in fact, labor seems poised to spread to other large retail outlets.

The Emart labor union recently called on company management to acknowledge the emotional labor of employees at Emart branches and to prepare countermeasures by adding five agenda items to their collective agreement. Noting that sales staff are directly exposed to insults, harsh language, and violent behavior by customers, the union urged management to adjust the collective agreement so as to acknowledge the value of emotional labor and to draft a manual for dealing with customers.

The union also asked management to provide employees with an additional 60,000 won (US$56.68) each month in recognition of the value of emotional labor. Furthermore, they requested the company to put up warning posters in the customer service departments at stores, which field complaints from customers, to prevent violent language and abuse.

“The company needs to devise concrete methods for employees to respond to violence when it occurs,” said Jeon Su-chan, leader of the Emart union, on June 18.

Most of the time, Emart employees (the majority of whom are women in their forties or above) are forced to endure “intense” emotional labor without knowing the proper way to deal with these cases.

Emart employee Lee Mi-seon, 50, recalls a female customer in her 30s who brought over a product to her after misreading the price tag. “First, she demanded to know why the product was so expensive. Then she said that I didn’t look nice, that she didn’t like how I looked and that I was a jerk on top of that. She insulted me and yelled at me for an hour before leaving,” Lee said.

One time a customer brought in a half-eaten slice of watermelon and started cursing at Lee, asking her to exchange it because it wasn’t sweet enough. There were also parents who told their children - while standing right in front of Lee - that sales staff work at Emart because they didn’t study hard enough.

Some employees have even quit their job because they are unable to endure the emotional labor. “When I asked a customer who was taking an item they hadn’t paid for out of the store to show me their receipt, they verbally abused me. In the end, I quit my job last month because of how insulted I felt,” said Lim In-sun, 48, who worked the cash register at a large retail outlet.

Calls to recognize emotional labor in collective agreements and to actively provide a means of compensation are gaining momentum. Earlier this year, Homeplus added a clause in its collective agreement stating, “management and labor acknowledge the value of the emotional labor of union members.” The company also agreed to prevent employees who have been attacked by customers from meeting those customers again and to provide them with paid leave.

“The most important thing here is acknowledging the uniqueness and the value of emotional labor,” said Kim Guk-hyeon, chief of promotion for the Homeplus labor union.

Currently, Louis Vuitton and cosmetics companies L’Oreal and ELCA Korea have acknowledged the emotional labor of employees at their department store outlets and are giving them an extra allowance. Reportedly, Gangwon Land Casino is also reviewing the possibility of acknowledging emotional labor.

“Some companies are using collective agreements to recognize emotional labor and provide a means of compensating for that, but in most cases these efforts have not gone beyond a fact-finding survey. Even when there has been discussion between labor and management, these measures have not been institutionalized,” said Kim Jong-jin, researcher at the Korea Labour and Society Institute.

“Labor and management need to reach an agreement to first recognize the value of emotional labor and then come up with ways to prevent harm. It is also necessary to create policy-based and institutional measures to protect emotional laborers,” Kim said.

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]