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| picture by: Duncan McKenzie. Click for enlargement |
Call centres today employ more people than the coal and steel industries combined. Yet working conditions – with low wages and unprecedented levels of monitoring and control – suggest they are the ‘dark satanic mills’ of the 21st century. Klas Ronnback investigates.
The UK has currently about 4000 call centres. Over 300,000 people work in them, more than in the coal and steel industries combined - and the total is expected to double by 2004.1 The trade association Centre Calls (or the Call Centre Association (CCA)), was formed in 1996 as a body for communication between members, and to provide "leadership in areas surrounding call centre evolution". Its 420 members range from public offices and charities to private companies.2
The hubs of call centre activity have traditionally been in telecommunications (BT, Vodafone, Orange and One2One are major employers) and the financial sector, where First Direct dominate the market. Other companies, such as the television broadcaster Sky, are following suit.3 Increasingly the trend is to outsource these operations to external companies like Manpower or 7C - who claim to be the largest outsourcing call centre company in the UK.4
Since call centres need not be located in company headquarters,5 government investment agencies such as ‘Locate in Scotland’ are enticing companies with offers of financial backing, recruitment assistance, and real estate.6 The industry is celebrated by enthusiasts for bringing employment to run-down areas and isolated places. But a closer look at the working conditions in call centres suggests that philanthropy is not the only reason to outlocate.
Low-employment areas generally suffer a low average income, something that altruistic managers are quick to grasp - wages in most call centres are about half the average earned by full-time workers.7 The employees’ youth (they are generally aged between 20 and 30, many of them saving for higher education), is an extra incentive to keep wages low.
One company advertised the benefits of a call centre with the slogan ‘Total Control Made Easy’.8 Research from the London School of Economics (LSE) vindicates this claim, revealing a level of monitoring and control unheard of in most manufacturing industries. Employees are ‘force fed’ calls with a rigid time limit, often set at a new call every 30 seconds (120 calls an hour); calls are taped and analysed; every break - whether to smoke or to use the toilet - is recorded; and the list goes on.9 The sickness rate is double the industry average.10 Sue Fernie, an LSE researcher, describes the old-style assembly line as "a Sunday school picnic compared to what we find in a call-centre."11
The companies claim that this control is only to ‘help’ the staff – and they take a pride in monitoring all the calls made, alleging that this improves the ‘quality’ of their work.12 As one manager stated on BBC News: "We use quality assessment in a very progressive way, which helps people understand their own career paths and personal development."13 This "personal development" must be rapid, since contracts of two weeks or less are common. Most workers are not slow to develop an "understanding" of their "career path": two months is the average length of stay at any call centre. And short contracts certainly allow a "progressive" use of assessment, freeing managers to fire employees at will and to circumvent many obligations as an employer.14
To untangle fact from fiction in the corporate propaganda of British call centre managers, we need only look to the United States. The American Call Centre News Service obliges with its description of a rep’s job: "A rep takes a day's worth of crap from customers and comes back tomorrow. A rep puts up with long hours and low pay and not enough motivation from his or her supervisors… A rep ensures that the customer experience is the best it can possibly be, a truly thankless task."15
Not surprisingly therefore, most call centres are understaffed. One consequence of this is long waiting times for callers, often provoking verbal abuse - suffered in turn by call centre employees, during which company policy forbids them to hang up.
The high turnover of staff, low wages, young ages, short contracts, and low prospects in high-unemployment areas are all disincentives to improve conditions: only 7% of workers are unionised, and so far there is almost no legal regulation of their working conditions.
One exception occurred in November 1999, when the first strike ever held in any British call centre was conducted by the Communication Workers Union (CWU). This was not over low wages, but over the unacceptable working conditions practiced by British Telecom. With its ‘Big Brother’ mentality, workers were threatened with disciplinary action if calls were not dealt with in 285 seconds.16 Although BT initially stated that the strike had no effect on their operations, they quickly agreed to discuss improvements with the CWU.17
BT may have improved some of their most outrageous working practices, but this still leaves the rest of the industry - with several hundred thousand people working under conditions of exploitation and Orwellian surveillance reminiscent more of the excesses of the nineteenth century than the ‘knowledge economy’ of the twenty-first.
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Footnotes
[1]"Advances in call centres", Financial Times, 15th March 2000; "Job growth in call centres to slow", Financial Times, 21st January 2000; "Openings create 35,000 jobs", Financial Times, 21st February 2000.
[2] "Frequently asked questions about the CCA", Call Centre Association, http://www.cca.org.uk, 6th April 2000.
[3] "Advances in call centres", Financial Times, 15th March 2000; "Comeuppance calling", The Guardian, 26th November 1999; "Openings create 35,000 jobs", Financial Times, 21st February 2000.
[4] "Call recording in the UK", Call Center News Service, http://www.callcenternews.com/, 6th April 2000.
[5] "Call centres: the new sweatshops of Britain?", BBC News, 26th February 1998.
[6] "LIS Call centres sector home page", Locate in Scotland, http://www.scotcall.com, 6th April 2000.
[7]"Call centres pay more to shake off sweatshop tag", The Guardian, 1st November 1999.
[8] "Call centres: the new sweatshops of Britain?", BBC News, 26th February 1998.
[9] "Call centre overtake coal, steel and car industries", BBC News, 20th February 1998.
[10] "Boom-time for call centres", BBC News, 18th August 1999; "Comeuppance calling", The Guardian, 26th November 1999; "National strike pulls plug on BT", The Guardian, 23rd November 1999.
[11] "Call centre overtake coal, steel and car industries", BBC News, 20th February 1998.
[12] "Call recording in the UK", Call Center News Service, http://www.callcenternews.com/, 6th April 2000.
[13] "Call centre overtake coal, steel and car industries", BBC News, 20th February 1998.
[14] "Life at the end of the line", The Guardian, 21st November 1999; "TUC backs student workers", BBC News, 3rd April 2000.
[15 "Frequently asked questions", ", Call Centre News Service, http://www.callcenternews.com/, 6th April 2000.
[16] "All set for BT call centre strike", CWU press release, 19th November 1999 ; "BT workers vote for strike", BBC News 12th November 1999; "Call centre workers down phones", BBC News, 22nd November 1999.
[17] "BT call centre strikes called off as best practice deal is agreed", CWU press release, 8th December 1999.