Morten
Alme’s article was interesting in so far
as the ad-pages in the Sunday Times would not try
to take into account the negative experiences of
people like him. However, some may validly object
that his article is not just personal, but subjective
to the point of being misleading. His article could
be read as an interminable rant from a dissatisfied
employee who may very well have been fired on valid
grounds. To make a sustainable critique of GEM,
more than subjective experience is required, valid
and objective grounds are needed.
Let’s
work on the assumption that GEM is no better and
no worse than other call centres in Ireland or the
Great Britain. Objective data to assess working
practices in call centres is becoming increasingly
available. (1)
What
we can gather of empirical studies and independent
research on labour practices of call centres is
this.
The
organisational structures of call centres are more
or less similar. At the top, there is a chief executive
officer, assisted by one or two vice presidents.
Reporting to vice presidents are managers and team
leaders. While managers are given generic assignments,
team leaders have specific tasks. Trainers are also
more or less on a par with the team leaders. Call
centre agents are at the bottom of the hierarchy.
Space
management tends to reflect organisational structures:
Work
is monitored live with the help of specially designed
software, computer networks and closed circuit cameras.
Workplace interactions are continuously recorded/taped,
which are randomly checked by the team leader. "The
degree of surveillance required at work is even
comparable with the situations of 19th century prisons
or Roman slave ships." Call centres are
panoptical in nature.
A
call-centre worker is a prime example of a "cyber
coolie" with precarious employment, low wages
and no professional opportunities.
The
workforce in call centres is dual in nature, with
the simultaneous existence of core (permanent) and
periphery (non-permanent) workers. Managers and
team leaders tend to constitute the core workers.
Only a small proportion of recruited staff will
become permanent employees. “Employers are
looking for two kinds of people. People who are
completely brain dead, who accept commands and carry
them out. And then they want a smaller number of
believers who will become managers and trainers.”
(2)
The
employee status is only titular as agents can be
thrown out at any point if the company wants to
do so. The duration of employment of the agents
also support the argument against the fallacy of
the ‘regular’ status. Only a minority
of people in the call centre industry hold their
position for more than two years, and most of them
are not call advisors. High attrition rates in the
call centre industry clearly indicate all the employment
insecurities associated with short-term employment
contracts, low wages and the absence of vertical
career paths in the sector. Workers are thrown out
on a regular basis, due to the firms’ strive
for retaining only the most productive hands and
to get rid of long-term commitments towards employees.
The chances of vertical mobility are bleak, given
the pyramid structure of manpower organisation.
"It is accepted among the agents, that their
vertical mobility in the job career is more linked
to their healthy relation to the management than
their performance ratings." Low wages are
the norm.
Another
of the reasons for the employees leaving is the
highly demanding and stressful nature of the work.
The
organisation of work in call centres is atypical
and flexible in terms of working hours and work
patterns. A typical centre will operate 24 hours
a day, 365 days a year. Companies will thus practise
"flexibility" in working patterns where
the agents’ work schedules do not have any
fixed days off. Flexibility is also practised in
the case of shift patterns, where the agents are
expected to be flexible in adapting the hours of
work if the firm requests them to change.
The
odd working hours in call centre negatively impact
upon the workers and causes physical stress. Such
working times conflict with the natural rythm of
the human body. The change inflicted on the routine
day and night body responses, with regular work
in the nights causes many physical ill effects that
also lead to a lot of mental strain. Odd working
hours also lead to disturbances in personal and
social life.
The
rythm of work is imposed by automatic call distribution
(ACD) technology (such as Avaya) on which call centres
are based. The technology-induced efficiency at
work requires the agents to submit to a highly controlled
work regime, which is similar to assembly-line manufacturing
associated with Fordism or Taylorism. The agents
are to meet daily targets, which are stipulated
in terms of number of calls/e-mails successfully
answered. These quotas are often fixed at a higher
level that the agent has to burn out to fulfil it.
The performances are rated in terms of quantity
and quality of work done. Mistakes will result in
warnings. Linking performances with incentives and
punitive actions compels agents to stress continuously.
A rising number of call centre workers complain
of stress, panic attacks, depression, relationship
troubles, alcoholism and eating disorders, multiple
personality disorders and other psychiatric problems.
Apart from headaches and eye strain due to computer
work, there are also complaints of back pain, aches
and pains in the neck, shoulders, arms or wrists.
Such musculoskeletal disorders are generally associated
with awkward postures, monotonous and repetitive
tasks and inadequate systems of work. Disrupting
the brain's built-in day-night clock is throwing
hormone levels out of balance, and is likely to
cause many fertility related problems among women.
Women who are exposed to a large amount of light
at night also have a higher risk of breast cancer.
Respondents
to empirical call centre studies (3)
“reported several symptoms of mental and
physical ill health such as nervousness, chronic
fatigue, body ache, insomnia, nausea, anxiety, restlessness,
irritability and even depression. Some of them pointed
out that working in shift even causes psychoneurotic
disturbances such as depressions. The respondents
also reported frequent occurrence of gastrointestinal
problems, with digestive problems such as constipation,
peptic ulcer, indigestion, diarrhea, excessive gas
formation, abdominal pain and heart burn. It was
also noticed that workers do develop poor eating
habits, overeating, smoking, excessive drinking
of coffee and so on to cope up with the psychological
and physical stress.”
All
these findings point towards the desirability of
undertaking a detailed epidemiological study on
call centre work.
Call
centres represent a major change in the way in which
many office-based jobs are structured and undertaken
and have enabled the emergence of a 'productively
docile worker'. This in at least two ways.
First,
work is portrayed as "fun". There is a
constant attempt at camouflaging work as "fun"
through the hanging of colourful balloons, team
competition of floral arrangements, organising get
together parties, introducing ping-pong tables,
designing 'recreations activities' etc. The purpose
of camouflaging work as fun is "to ensure
that the creativity and productivity of the workers
are effectively tapped to strike the ‘right’
balance between work and fun, thereby creating a
‘productively docile’ workforce. All these,
indicate a marked shift in the HR paradigm vis-a-vis
that of personnel management in conventional-manufacturing/service
sectors."
Secondly,
the principles of work organisation are based on
individualisation and the absence of collective
interest or action. Workers are moulded to act as
individuals who report to and are monitored by another
individual. Even in project-based teamwork, this
is the core principle that binds the work relations.
It is widely internalised among the call centre
agents that salary is a personal matter, which should
not be shared with peers in the workplace. Call
centres in their code of conducts sometimes highlight
that discussing salary and related matters with
fellow-workers would invite warnings and disciplinary
action.
The
worker is not part of any collective: "Completely
individuated, the worker negotiates with the employer
at the individual level without resorting to any
collective bargaining measures. This has tempted
many to call the work place 'very cordial'. This,
on the contrary, may be far from truth. The invididuated
worker is an isolated element, working on contract,
shifting from firm to firm, and requiring learning
the latest skills before it gets obsolete."
There
is no sense of collective action or trade unionism:
My
personal experience of GEM in 2002 was consistent
with: (a) an atmosphere of constant surveillance,
(b) precarious work contract, low wage, no professional
opportunities, (c) ‘flexibility’ of work
days and shift patterns, (d) incentive and punitive
action related performance, (e) negative physical
and mental consequences of this witnessed on many
co-workers, (f) work camouflaged as ‘fun’,
(g) everything individualised and absence of collective
interest or action. I have yet to be presented with
evidence that things have since changed or that
call centre work is desirable under its present
form.
NOTES
(1) Sociology of work studies of call centres dealing
specifically with the UK and Ireland are at an early
stage. The most detailed quantitative and qualitative
studies so far available have been carried out in
India. One could object that the situation in India
is radically different. But the generic characteristics
of the call centre industry are the same. Studies
used here include:
Remesh,
B. P. Labour in Business Process Outsourcing: A
Case Study of Call Centre Agents, NLI Research Studies
Series No.51, (Noida: V.V. Giri National Labour
Institute 2004)
Uday
Kumar Varma & S.K. Sasikumar, Information and
Communication Technology and Decent work, Research
Report prepared under the auspices of ILO/JILPT
Networking of National Institutes of Labour Studies
in the Asia Pacific region (Noida: V.V. Giri National
Labour Institute, 2004)
Babu
P Ramesh, Cyber Coolies in BPO: Insecurities and
Vulnerabilities of Non-Standard Work, Economics
and Political Weekly (Vol 39, No 5), January 31-February
6 2004
Jaya
Prakash Pradhan & Vinoj Abraham, Social and
Cultural Impact of Outsourcing: Emerging Issues
from Indian Call Centres, Harvard Asia Quarterly:
A Journal of Current Affairs affiliated with the
Harvard Asia Centre, Summer 2005
(2)
Amelia Gentleman, Painful truth of the call centre
cyber coolies, The Observer, 30 October 2005
(3)
Babu P Ramesh’s paper is based on the findings
of a field study of 277 customer care agents from
six call centres.
