By Kim Tae-jong
Kim, a worker at a Seoul-based call center, received a phone call from a customer, who started to swear at her suddenly in the middle of the conversation. But Kim had no choice but to keep saying, “I’m sorry,” without knowing why.
“He swore at me for about 30 minutes and told me sarcastically to swear at him back as he knew I couldn’t do so,” she said. “All I could do was to say sorry, as I wasn’t allowed to hang up first.”
Another shop assistant Lee, working at a department store in downtown Seoul, also complained how she was badly treated by customers.
“Some customers just yell at me when they can’t find products they want. I think customers basically tend to look down on us,” she said.
But she also said shop assistants are never allowed to defend themselves because they can receive poor performance ratings if customers complain to their supervisors.
Like the two cases, many of these so-called “emotional workers” are ill-treated by customers.
Emotional workers refer to those who are engaged in employment that requires them to regulate their emotions. They include nurses, call center employees, shop assistants and salesmen.
The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) conducted face-to-face interviews with 30 such female workers last October. Citing the interview results, the NHRC said a majority of emotional workers, especially female employees, suffer from human rights abuses.
In another survey of 303 customers, the NHRC also found over 20 percent of the respondents said they have vented their anger on workers.
“Emotional workers in Korea are severely looked down on by customers and treated in a really bad way,” said Kang Eun-soon, an official from the NHRC. “But they are always forced to provide customers with excessive kindness,”
She demanded the government and companies come up with protective measures for emotional workers such as a limit of customer calls that a call center worker should handle a day.
In this regard, the NHRC has also launched a campaign to encourage people to show more respect and consideration for emotional workers and requested the legislation of a special law to improve their working conditions and to protect their human rights.
Experts say emotional workers suffer from extreme stress and sometimes severe depression, calling for companies to systematically help them properly take care of emotional exhaustion.
According to last year’s survey by the Korean Federation of Private Service Workers’ Unions (KFPSWU), depression rates of emotional workers were much higher than that of officer workers.
The survey of 3,096 workers showed 32.7 percent of cosmetics salespeople, 31.6 percent of casino dealers and 26.5 percent of cashers had symptoms of depression, requiring medical treatment. In comparison, the depression rate of office workers stood at 23.9 percent.
Currently, some emotional workers receive extra pay as some unions and management agreed on that in 2006, but labor activists argue that financial benefits cannot be a good supporting measure.
“Emotional workers need time to relieve their physical and mental fatigue as they often suffer from extreme stress due to unreasonable demands from customers and verbal assaults,” said Jung Min-jung, general director at the KFPSWU.
The KFPSWU is now encouraging its member unions to demand “paid emotional leave” from next year, she said.
Some unions including that of cosmetics company L’OREAL Korea said they plan to request management to allow their sales workers to have “paid emotional leave” guaranteed in their collective agreement next year.
e3dward@koreatimes.co.kr
