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Marques Alves, P. (2017). Call centre workers: loyalty, exit or… voice?. VII Congrés Català de Sociologia – La Postveritat i la Manca de Reflexió, una Nova Realitat del Segle XXI?.

P. J. Alves,  "Call centre workers: loyalty, exit or… voice?", in VII Congrés Català de Sociologia – La Postveritat i la Manca de Reflexió, una Nova Realitat del Segle XXI?, Tarragona, 2017

@misc{alves2017_1766924379757,
	author = "Marques Alves, P.",
	title = "Call centre workers: loyalty, exit or… voice?",
	year = "2017"
}

TY  - CPAPER
TI  - Call centre workers: loyalty, exit or… voice?
T2  - VII Congrés Català de Sociologia – La Postveritat i la Manca de Reflexió, una Nova Realitat del Segle XXI?
AU  - Marques Alves, P.
PY  - 2017
CY  - Tarragona
AB  - Following the emergence of what Harvey (1989) calls "flexible accumulation”, the call centres emerged and expanded. These workplaces reveal the application of the principles of the despotic regime of Taylor and Ford and simultaneously they are the symbol of the business organization model of the current stage of capitalism, a network organization that is subordinated to a logic of rationalization of costs, through the widespread of subcontracting involving a generalized precariousness.
Besides that, alongside with the old coercive ones, new hegemonic logics of domination (Burawoy, 1979) are implemented and a newspeak arises in order to produce the consent of domination by the workers, leading them to cooperate with the reproduction of capital.
Under these conditions, what is the place for collective action in the call centres? Although the logics of domination hinder it, through the production of conformism that leads to loyalty, and despite the individual exit attitude that prevails, collective action is possible. In this paper we will demonstrate that. It is based in a case study of a call centre in Lisbon. We made several interviews with workers and shop stewards and analysed some documents.
For collective action 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 a clear 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. Absolutely crucial is the presence of militant unions in the workplace and the communication face-to-face between workers and unions, supported by a creative use of the Internet by the unions.
ER  -