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Through a case study of the Gyeongseong Electric Co. (hereafter GEC) during the early 1940’s, this paper examines the particular characteristics of the labor structure and management of companies operating under wartime economic controls, as well as the lives of laborers, specifically the trolleymen at the GEC. Labor management during the late colonial period relied on an ideology of mobilization in order to control labor, but previous scholarship has portrayed the process simply as a tightening of control. To block the sudden movement of laborers, the Japanese Government-General accepted the need for a type of conciliatory policy in 1943 that permitted wage increases, provided bonuses, and offered benefits, but was intended to train “veteran laborers” [junggyeonnodongja] and more effectively control the Korean laborers. From among the trolleymen, the GEC appointed loyal, long-term employed workers as vice-supervisors or supervisors and wanted to foster these as the veteran workers. The GEC did not implement policies to rectify the mounting discontent of the Korean workers with discrimination between employee positions but used the discontent to block the workers from achieving solidarity. This policy accelerated the divisions between and the heterogenization of the Korean laborers. Junior trolleymen who had been only working for a short while were dissatisfied with the working conditions and changed companies, but the long-term workers, including the vicesupervisors and supervisors, were satisfied with the treatment of the GEC. In conclusion, the long-term consequences of the heterogenization of the Korean labor force included the post-Liberation formation of two labor unions, the Gyeongseong Electric Company Employee Union [Gyeongseongjeongi-jongeopwonjohab] and the Gyeongjeon Labor Union of the Daehan Confederation of Labor Unions [Daehannochong-Gyeongjeonnodongjohab], that fought for primacy after Liberation.