Changes in Worker Health Impacts and Challenges in Unions Resulting from Labor Management Policy Shifts (2024)

Korea Institute of Labor Safety and Health

LG U+ Non-Regular Workers Branch of the Hope Union Branch of the

Korean Public Service and Transport Workers’ Union (KPTU)

Translated by Hyeeun Lee

Reviewed by Joe DiGangi

1. Research background and purpose

This study was conducted with workers belonging to the LG U+ Non-Regular Workers Branch under the Hope Union Branch of the Korean Public Service and Transport Workers’ Union (KPTU). These workers are responsible for visiting customers’ homes to perform tasks such as internet installation and repair, schedule management, device inspection, and support. Since 2023, the subsidiary has implemented labor management policies including reduced unit work time, intensified performance pressure, and strengthened disciplinary measures, leading to a drastic change in the working environment. These changes have increased workers’ labor intensity and stress levels while heightening the risk of accidents during work processes. Indeed, the industrial accident rate surged sharply in 2023 and 2024 compared to 2022, reflecting the reality of workers forced to perform tasks at accelerated speeds under intensified control and pressure.

The objective of this study was to empirically reveal the specific impacts these labor management policy changes have had on workers’ labor intensity, job stress, and mental health. Specifically, the study aimed to understand how performance evaluation systems, detached from reality and focused solely on results, affect workers’ stress and health. It also sought to analyze changes observed in the workplace following the introduction of disciplinary training and the ‘Basic Compliance Committee system,’ thereby providing substantive evidence for improving labor conditions.

2. Methods

The research team employed three parallel methods: a survey, in-depth interviews, and job shadowing observations. First, an online survey was conducted from August 1 – 14, 2024, targeting 575 union members to assess their working hours, labor intensity, job stress, emotional labor, health status, and perceptions of policy changes. Next, ten workers were selected considering job type, age, and gender. In-depth interviews were conducted over approximately two weeks to collect on-site experiences and opinions. Finally, through job shadowing alongside field workers for a full day, pressure factors and the flow of time within the actual work environment were recorded and analyzed. By securing both quantitative data and qualitative narratives through these research methods, the study aimed to illuminate the multifaceted impact of policy changes on workers’ lives.

3. Summary of survey results

Survey results showed that intensified labor control through performance-indicator focused systems and increased daily work goals consistently negatively impacts job stress, labor intensity, and mental health. This underscores the need to move beyond productivity-focused performance systems and consider work schedules that reflect worker/union input. Furthermore, unhealthy states such as depression, helplessness, and suicidal thoughts were prevalent.

Nearly 60% of respondents reported an average of 30 minutes or less lunch time per day, and nearly 75% reported resting for an average of 30 minutes or less per day. This is because they reduced meal and rest times to cope with heightened performance pressure. The percentages reporting that they work at a very fast pace for most or all of their working hours, or that they work to meet strict deadlines, were also very high at 34% and 45%, respectively. The percentage reporting feeling pressure regarding performance reached 90%.

Thus, workers were required to handle multiple tasks simultaneously at a rapid pace and were routinely pressured by performance metrics. This pressure causes physical and mental exhaustion, confirmed by over 80% of respondents reporting feeling physically and mentally drained after work. Workers also clearly recognized that their workload intensity was increasing due to stress from handling complaints and customer-facing duties, the performance evaluation system and performance-based incentives, promotion systems, and excessive workloads.

For job stress, both men and women rated the areas of “job demands,” “job insecurity,” and “organizational structure” in the top 25% or higher. Additionally, men rated “workplace culture” in the top 25% or higher, while women rated “inadequate compensation” in the top 25% or higher. This appears to reflect increased perceptions of being rushed, monitored, or controlled following labor policy changes, along with heightened pressure through bodies like the ‘Basic Compliance Committee’ or disciplinary actions, that are causing employment insecurity.

Emotional labor also showed a very high rate of classification as high-risk across all items. The reason can be confirmed in interviewees’ accounts: when friction arises with customers or managers, the company does not protect workers but only emphasizes customer satisfaction. Workers must bow or apologize to customers first because of the customer’s satisfaction scores. Furthermore, nearly 75% of workers experienced verbal abuse like personal insults, humiliation, or profanity in the past year, with customers being the primary perpetrators. Physical assault and sexual harassment were also significant.

Employer-required worker protection measures were not being properly implemented, leaving workers frequently and directly exposed to unfair treatment. This stems from managers prioritizing their anxiety about potentially receiving poor customer satisfaction ratings over fulfilling the company’s role of protecting workers.

These poor working conditions also adversely affected workers’ mental health. A significant 43% of workers reported experiencing moderate to severe depression. Over 10% responded that they had seriously considered suicide.

Meanwhile, regarding items such as labor intensity, job stress, and relationships with colleagues or supervisors, respondents were asked to score the perceived changes before and after the policy changes. Respondents reported experiencing negative impacts across all areas following the policy changes. Particularly noticeable changes were observed in “the degree of customer satisfaction evaluations,” “the increase in workload,” “anxiety about disciplinary actions,” and “the frequency of feeling rushed due to heavy workloads.” They consistently stated that work intensity increased due to heightened pressure regarding performance evaluations and a greater number of tasks requiring completion. It was also confirmed that the company’s ‘Basic Compliance Committee’ and excessive disciplinary measures are being used as tools to control workers, leading to increased anxiety.

We sought to statistically analyze whether perceived negative impacts from work performance pressure or policy changes affect labor intensity or mental health. Comparisons among survey respondents revealed that those experiencing performance pressure endured greater work intensity than those who did not, and reported 2.3 times higher levels of depression. Furthermore, respondents who felt more negative impacts after policy changes experienced higher work intensity compared to those who did not, and reported significantly higher levels of depression and suicide risk, 2.0 times and 1.9 times higher, respectively.

4. Summary of interview findings

The key points confirmed through interviews are summarized as follows. The annually increasing daily tasks and the resulting reduction in time allocated per task are direct factors intensifying workers’ labor intensity. Workers must complete all customer-requested tasks within tight time constraints, performing their duties under intense time pressure while taking risks. In the process, they are exposed to various physical hazards such as punctures, cuts, collisions, and falls. They also engage in risky driving practices like talking on the phone or speeding while traveling to the next destination. Furthermore, since field workers and schedulers fundamentally rely on face-to-face customer interactions and phone consultations, respectively, workers for whom customer communication is a significant part of their job experience emotional strain while trying to meet the organization’s demands for excessive politeness. For field workers, customers’ homes become a primary workplace, exposing them to violence such as verbal abuse, threats, and dog bites.

Workers attempt to communicate with managers to alleviate increasing work intensity and risk exposure, but their concerns are not addressed within an organizational policy that fuels performance competition between workers and centers. The organization evaluates and manages workers based on various metrics, including the number of daily tasks, error rates, and customer satisfaction (“happy-call” scores). As performance standards rise annually, the organization employs various means across multiple channels to exert intense performance pressure on workers. Through morning meetings, online communication channels used during work hours, individual meetings with managers, and sending underperforming workers to training sessions in other regions, the organization uses diverse mechanisms and systems to reinforce the message that target performance must be achieved, thereby controlling the workers’ labor process. Amid this company-wide performance pressure, workers compare their performance with colleagues and feel a sense of self-loathing for perceived incompetence. Similarly, under this pressure, conflicts arise between schedulers assigning heavy workloads to field workers and the field workers themselves. Workers also experience a sense of defeat under punitive labor control methods like the “Basic Compliance Committee.”

5. Recommendations: Need to Reduce Workload and Increase

Union Intervention

The fundamental and urgent task is to adjust the number of daily tasks, which has been increasing annually. The daily target work load rose from 4 cases in 2022 to 4.5 cases in 2023 and 6 cases in 2024. Under a company-wide performance-driven management system emphasizing individual worker and center-specific target achievement, workers are required to perform an average of over 6 tasks within the 7-hour window between the start of first-visit work at 10 AM and the official end of work at 6 PM. This includes handling task transitions, after-sales service (A/S) duties, and collecting canceled products.

Within an organizational management system that forces them to squeeze A/S and cancellation tasks into any spare moments between jobs, workers feel time pressure, rush themselves, and suffer from high labor intensity. The nature of the job, requiring completion of tasks and travel to the next location before the scheduled appointment time with the next customer, creates significant mental strain. This heightened work intensity drives workers into involuntary risk-taking behaviors, exposing them to physical hazards more frequently and intensely. This phenomenon is equally evident among equipment managers, whose workload has increased alongside field workers, requiring more products and equipment, thereby also intensifying their labor demands. Schedulers, too, complain of increased work intensity and stress as they are required to manage in real time to assign tasks to field workers without gaps and to secure new tasks at unreasonable rates.

This reality contradicts LGU+ Home Service’s management policy promoting the ‘creation of a safe and healthy working environment.’ It spreads pressure to achieve target performance at any cost to the field, heightening workers’ physical and mental risks. Therefore, active intervention is needed to lower the current unsustainable target workload of 6 cases per day, and to prevent attempts to maintain or further increase it.

Meanwhile, LGU+ Home Service employs various labor control strategies to drive individual workers toward meeting daily target case processing numbers. Beyond routinely emphasizing target performance and fostering comparison and competition among workers through online group chats used for morning meetings and work communication, it has established a new disciplinary procedure called the ‘Basic Compliance Committee’ alongside formal disciplinary processes. This committee regulates worker behavior through punitive measures. While penalties from the Basic Compliance Committee do not directly impact wages or status, violations of the company’s ‘10 Ground Rules’ result in referral to this committee. Warnings issued by the committee are reflected in performance evaluations, and accumulated warnings result in referral to the Disciplinary Committee. Even without receiving a warning, the experience of being referred to the Basic Compliance Committee without a proper opportunity to explain oneself or being treated like a criminal exerts a powerful controlling effect on workers. It serves as a means to prevent workers from refusing excessive workloads and work intensity on the job site. The practice of employing punitive labor control strategies to maintain high labor intensity raises questions about legitimacy and demonstrates the necessity for worker and union participation in disciplinary standards and procedures.

6. Actualization and Systematization of Safety and Health Management

As societal safety awareness grows and the Serious Accidents Punishment Act takes effect, companies are increasingly implementing safety and health practices. LGU+ Home Service also champions the value of safety and health management, presenting the following as its safety and health management policies:

① Compliance with safety and health laws and internal regulations;

② Continuous operation of the safety and health management system;

③ Creation of a safe and healthy working environment;

④ Promotion of a safety culture.

LGU+ Home Service’s ‘10 Ground Rules’ serve as behavioral guidelines for members and include measures for creating a safe work environment, such as requiring the wearing of safety gear and prohibiting work in hazardous areas. The current collective agreement also explicitly states: “Union members may temporarily suspend work when they judge that tasks on rooftops, balconies, or railings are significantly difficult due to heavy rain or snow” (Article 35, Paragraph 2), and “may temporarily suspend work when personal dignity is violated by a customer’s verbal abuse, profanity, or sexual harassment during work, or when a customer persistently makes unreasonable demands unrelated to the task” (Article 38, Paragraph 1).

However, to achieve high performance levels, workers are performing tasks under time pressure and taking risks as assigned time per task is reduced and daily target processing volumes increase. Even when dangerous situations like missing guardrails are reported, managers respond by ordering work to proceed, or if workers protest, they simply reassign the task to a colleague instead of addressing the issue, demonstrating that the protection system is not functioning properly. The company refers workers to the Basic Compliance Committee for reasons like inadequate safety gear use, issuing warnings. This reveals a punitive approach to controlling safety—expanding the scope and types of disciplinary actions—rather than creating an environment where workers can perform tasks at safe speeds. While societal demands for a safer society and changes in legal systems have led to the establishment of occupational safety and health frameworks, these formal structures have been implemented without substance. The company’s performance management approach, focused solely on maximizing productivity, pushes workers into greater and more frequent exposure to hazards, undermining the practical functioning of these safety systems. Therefore, to genuinely create the ‘safe and healthy working environment’ presented as the organization’s management policy, workers must be effectively guaranteed the ‘right to stop work’ in hazardous situations. This must be accompanied by adjustments to performance indicators set at levels achievable only by accepting risks and a reduction in the intensity of labor.

7. Establishing a Sustainable Evaluation System

Finally, improvements are needed to the productivity-centered performance evaluation system. Various metrics measuring each stage and dimension of the labor process—including daily tasks volume, defect rates, and customer satisfaction (“happy-call” scores)—are utilized in performance evaluations. While diverse metrics measuring the quantity and quality of individual workers’ productivity have been developed and employed, metrics related to safety or health are notably absent from these evaluation criteria. The evaluation system used to assess work conditions and performance exerts a significant influence precisely because it disciplines workers’ behavior and shapes the work environment in specific ways. An evaluation system composed solely of indicators measuring work productivity and efficiency can sacrifice safety in the name of efficiency and increase risks in the work environment. Sustainable evaluation systems must be established by lowering the target levels for each performance indicator.

The target number of daily tasks fails to reflect the reality that actual working conditions and time required differ for each task. Therefore, the management approach of evaluating individual workers’ performance and ranking each center’s results based on this metric should be reconsidered. The company demands customer satisfaction or ‘happy-call’ scores of 95, 96, and now even 98 to 99 points. This is a difficult target to achieve when even one low satisfaction score among dozens of tasks can bring the overall score down. Workers experience significant stress over meeting customer satisfaction targets, as they cannot control customer complaints or negative attitudes through their job duties. They also feel anxious about having to respond to customer demands beyond their job scope. It is necessary to first drastically reduce the weight given to customer satisfaction scores in evaluating workers’ performance. Improvements are also needed in the customer evaluation methods and criteria to make them more reasonable and helpful. Rather than evaluating friendliness or attitude, it may suffice to simply verify whether the service the customer desired was performed without issue. Even the collective agreement already signed by labor and management stipulates that “the company shall establish an independent and reasonable evaluation system, conduct an annual survey on the performance evaluation system, and strive to reflect this in the evaluation system,” and that “elements beyond what is generally required for job performance shall be excluded from evaluation factors.” This is another reason why labor unions and the company must take seriously the workers’ consistent demand to abandon indicators based solely on productivity. Evaluation results should be utilized to improve work processes, not to control workers and foster competition among them as currently practiced. The process of improving the evaluation system must ensure worker participation, including that of labor unions, to address current shortcomings.