Exportar Publicação

Marques Alves, P. (2016). Call centre workers: loyalty, exit or… voice? . Midterm Conference do Research Network 18 da European Sociological Association.

P. J. Alves,  "Call centre workers: loyalty, exit or… voice? ", in Midterm Conf. do Research Network 18 da European Sociological Association, Lisboa, 2016

@misc{alves2016_1766943445816,
	author = "Marques Alves, P.",
	title = "Call centre workers: loyalty, exit or… voice? ",
	year = "2016",
	howpublished = "Outro",
	url = ""
}

TY  - CPAPER
TI  - Call centre workers: loyalty, exit or… voice? 
T2  - Midterm Conference do Research Network 18 da European Sociological Association
AU  - Marques Alves, P.
PY  - 2016
CY  - Lisboa
AB  - Under the rubble of Fordism, following the emergence of a new stage of capitalism, which is the response of the system to the crisis started in the 70s, a new economic activity emerged and expanded: the call centres, which have concentrated an important share of the employment worldwide, creating what Huws (2001, 2003) calls a "cybertariat".
Its expansion has been fuelled by the hegemonic neoliberal globalization, the service sector growth, the widespread diffusion of information and communication technologies and by the productive restructuring that features the new regime of accumulation that Harvey (1989) calls "flexible accumulation”, which strongly reinforces the destructive nature of capital (Mészáros, 1997).
Being an activity mediated by the use of technology, particularly the computer, in it can be found the brave new world of information and communication technologies and working conditions that are typical of the past. There is evidence of a deep "real degradation of the virtual work" (Antunes and Braga, 2009). In fact, contrary to the post-Fordism theses, these workplaces reveal the continued application of the principles of the scientific management’s despotic regime of Taylor and Ford in terms of work organization.
On the other hand, call centres are the symbol of the business organization model of the current stage of capitalism. It is a network organization consisting of three levels, standing these centres at the third, providing services to companies located in the others. In this logic, the rationalization of costs, through the widespread practice of subcontracting involving a generalized precariousness, is of great importance.
But the changes under the flexible accumulation were not only punctuated by an objective character. Through the ideological sphere the subjective dimension of workers was reached, with the apology of individualism to encourage competition between them. New hegemonic logics of domination are also implemented alongside with the old coercive ones and a newspeak arises in order to produce the consent of domination by the workers, leading them to cooperate with the reproduction of capital, as evidenced by Burawoy (1979).
Under these conditions, what is the place for collective action in the call centres? Although the logics of domination implemented hinder it, through the production of conformism that leads to loyalty, and despite the individual exit attitude that prevails, hence the high levels of turnover that exist in this industry in Portugal, collective action is possible. And we have some examples of that in Portugal that we will analyse in this paper.
However, for it to take place it is necessary that the conditions that were set out by O'Sullivan and Turner (2013) are present: the existence of a common sense of injustice; to target a clear and identifiable entity, making an objective distinction between "we" and "them"; and develop the confidence in the group, with “us” taking precedence over “me”. Furthermore, it is essential that the group see effectiveness in the action and that someone predisposes to be a spokesman of the group. Finally, the presence of militant unions in the workplace and the communication face-to-face between workers and unions is absolutely crucial.
ER  -