'Emotional labor'

By Sah Dong-seok

Nurses, bank tellers, restaurant employees, telemarketers, call center operators and salespersons: what do they have in common? They all have service jobs. More accurately, they are called employees who engage in “emotional labor’’ in that they are expected to “display certain emotions as part of their jobs and promote organizational goals.” Even acting is classified as emotional labor because actors are required to perform while concealing their feelings.

The term “emotional labor’’ was coined by American sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild in her 1983 book, “The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling,’’ where she described it as “management of feeling to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display … sold for a wage.’’

Many professions can be defined as emotional labor as long as they require face-to-face or voice-to-voice contact with the public and employers control employees’ emotions for their own purposes and profits.

As more service jobs are created in accordance with changes in our industrial structure, those engaging in these service professions are on the rise. According to Statistics Korea, the number of people having service jobs surged from 6.48 million in 2001 to 8.81 million in 2009 and many of them are seen to be performing emotional labor. In the United States, one out of two women is known to have emotional labor jobs.

No doubt, the spread of emotional labor is causing more people to struggle with job stress. Especially in Korea where the “customer is king’’ catchphrase is accepted with little resistance, service workers’ pain and plight are enormous.

Female telemarketers, for example, should not hang up the phone even though they fall victim to sexual harassment or foul language.

Bank tellers are groaning in no less pain. They spend nearly 90 percent of their working hours serving customers ― nearly 200 guests a day ― face to face.

Because of ever-intensifying inter-bank competition and banks’ overblown emphasis on customer satisfaction, the tellers must be always kind to customers and hide ― or even suppress ― their feelings. And many of them recount experiences of having apologized to customers without clear reason and exempted some shouting guests from bank fees out of fear that they may lodge petitions with banks.

Behind this submissive attitude is an inhumane system at banks in which tellers are graded so that their scores can be used as reasons for layoffs or promotions. In some cases, bank managers urge tellers not to take issue with customers’ sexual harassment.

Call center operators are also easily victimized by foul-mouthed callers. Last year, the Seoul municipal government asked police to investigate four malignant prank callers who habitually called the 120 Dasan Call Center, the city’s 24-hour call service, and verbally abused the operators. One of the four even called the center more than 1,600 times over two years while intoxicated. They were summarily indicted by prosecutors with one of them fined 4 million won. According to a survey conducted by the Korea Labor & Society Institute, seven out of 10 service workers usually suffer from customers’ verbal abuse.

Stress arising from emotional labor is usually expressed in the form of depression, insomnia and social phobia and these symptoms are the natural consequences of not revealing feelings and holding anger. And naturally, these “emotional labor workers’’ have no other alternative but to change jobs more frequently than those in other professions. A survey conducted last year showed that about 27 percent of service workers need psychotherapy.

While social problems associated with the spread of emotional labor runs deep, little has been done so far. These problems will be all the more serious, considering that service industries need to play a key role in creating more jobs as President Park Geun-hye pledged during her election campaign.

Most worrisome is that our society sees emotional labor as an issue that can be dealt with individually. But the situation doesn’t warrant optimism because the expanded emotional labor will breed a variety of social problems unless it is tackled promptly.

All this explains why the government, businesses and customers should act swiftly with respect to emotional labor.

More than anything else, the government needs to craft systems that can protect those having emotional labor jobs. One of the systems now being recommended by experts is to grant employees the right to defend themselves, which would free them from having to wait on guests who are ruthless or stubborn. Following such incidents, employees must not be disadvantaged later in any way.

Needless to say, the role of companies is most important, given that most emotional labor jobs are in the private sector. First of all, businesses need to refrain from managing employees’ feelings too excessively because they can’t be friendly to customers truly if they are obliged to do so. Employees should also be ensured regular mental health checkups and proper resting time. Companies need to operate in-house counseling centers for them.

What’s most important is for customers to refrain from making overblown demands and show respect to service workers.

The writer is the chief editorial writer of The Korea Times. Contact him at sahds@ktimes.co.kr.