감정노동자 보호의 제도화와 디커플링: 백화점 ‧ 면세점 화장품판매직의 인식 분석

The Occupational Safety and Health Act was revised in 2018 to establish the Emotional Worker Protection Act, which obliges service organizations to protect emotional laborers. This study analyzed how workers are protected from emotional labor in their workplaces since the act was implemented. Based on neo-institutionalism, the study conducted a qualitative study targeting cosmetics sales workers at department and duty-free stores. The study found that emotional laborer protection systems, including emotional labor leave and allowance, were preemptively introduced by the agreement between union and management. However, there was a gap, or decoupling, between the emotional laborer protection system and the actual working environments. The act does not contain detailed regulations, is not suitable for the unique working environment of department and duty-free stores, and it does not specify the obligations of primary contractors. Although service workers are better protected from the damage caused by emotional labor than in the past, the emotional laborer protection systems are not fully effective as intended. Until now, research on the emotional worker protection system has been insufficient, and there have been rare cases of examining whether the system actually works in the workplace. This study is significant in that it found the institutional decoupling and diagnosed its causes.