Call centers: A new front in the class struggle

[Bolshy]

[/URL][URL="http://www.workers.org/donate/"]0
(http://www.workers.org/2011/us/call_centers_0825/)

[Lenina Rosenweg]

I've worked in call centers in the US. They are horrible places to work. I've found it can be difficult to organize in a call center, at least the kind where people are paid on a bonus structure. The "cult of the entrepreneur" is fostered, they encourage employers to think of themselves as individual business people. There is a lot of griping about management but little solidarity.We were in the UAW, a horrid organization.The heads of the local were very openly collaborating with management and it was extremely difficult to force a recall.

There seems to be much more solidarity at Verizon call centers.

Overall call centers are bleak, high pressure, utterly dehumanizing places to work.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

I don't know how "new" this front is. I worked at a call center almost a decade ago, and then again a few years later. I know people who worked in them before that. I know a lot of people working them in the Philippines who have been for years.

Of course the WWP's typical union bureaucrat worship isn't going to help any one working in one of these hell holes.

Yes.. as the CWA tops collaborate with management in a screw job on Verizon workers who risked their livelihoods by striking, let's praise their puffed up talk about organizing.

[Jimmie Higgins]

There is a lot of griping about management but little solidarity.Yeah I had this same experience. I even met someone who worked as a union salt in the past when I was working at a place like that and yet it was hard to do anything. People didn't last long at that job and I only stayed for a handful of months and so the bitterness and anger is very high, but possibilities to organize are a little tougher. Plus, a lot of the workforce would be in completely different regions - we'd take over for the east-coast people and then people in Hawaii or outside the US would take the 3rd shift, so that adds a whole other problem.

I think it will no doubt be possible someday for there to be organizing done (cross-border international organizing too maybe!) but it will be difficult and would probably take a more generally militant atmosphere in the entire workforce for this to happen.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

They're generally soul destroying places, though in terms of their actual 'oppression', it depends what sort of work you're in.

I've often worked in market research call centres as an outbound telephone interviewer and, though sitting in an office on the phone with a supervisor barking orders all day isn't great, the basic pay can be very, very good in some places, though I guess that's down to the company. I've been at places, also, that pay 100% commission, with minimum wage to fall back on if you're doing that badly.

I don't see the problem with call centres in theory (i'm talking about the western nations, I can imagine they are grotesque in places like Somalia), they are certainly an example of workplaces in need of reform rather than revolution. It is a fact that outbound call centres in particular are some of the best places to gather research for a variety of purposes. It's just a case that all companies need to be paying a high basic wage, with 'wage banding' instead of 'min wage + commission', and ensuring that workers don't have to pay for equipment, can have toilet breaks when they want and get several breaks during the day (for example at the good place I worked, i'd get 30 mins unpaid lunch and two paid 15 min breaks in a 7.75 hour shift. Not bad.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

I don't see the problem with call centres in theory (i'm talking about the western nations, I can imagine they are grotesque in places like Somalia), they are certainly an example of workplaces in need of reform rather than revolution. It is a fact that outbound call centres in particular are some of the best places to gather research for a variety of purposes. It's just a case that all companies need to be paying a high basic wage, with 'wage banding' instead of 'min wage + commission', and ensuring that workers don't have to pay for equipment, can have toilet breaks when they want and get several breaks during the day (for example at the good place I worked, i'd get 30 mins unpaid lunch and two paid 15 min breaks in a 7.75 hour shift. Not bad.

Yes, bad.

"Instead of the conservative motto: 'A fair day's wage for a fair day's work!' they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword: 'Abolition of the wages system!'"