leaflet on call centers from brighton

text in german
Here is the main article of a hotlines-leaflet written by people in Brighton/England (March 2001). They have taken some ideas from the first hotlines-leaflets that were distributed in Ruhrgebiet/Germany and added their information and ideas on the situation in Brighton call centers.
You can find their reports on specific call centers (amex, bt, ntl, seeboard) under reports.


We are a group of workers, outside any political party or trade union, working in call centres, factories, offices and restaurants in Brighton. We have come together to discuss how we can improve and change our working conditions. With this leaflet we want to share information we've gathered on the problems and conflicts in call centres here and in other countries.

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Brighton, Essen, Paris, Milan and Berlin… call centres have been operating for years and are on the increase in many cities and regions, including Brighton. Millions work in call centres in the banking and insurance industry, in technical support hotlines, in sales and marketing, in order services. As workers in call centres we call up people (outbound) or answer their calls (inbound) using integrated telephone and computer technology. We work in shifts and the work is divided into short, precisely defined work steps. And we are controlled by team leaders.

Lots of us work in call centres because in some areas it is the easiest way of getting a job. Sometimes these jobs are better paid than those in factories, in cleaning or in shops. But while the bosses and politicians present call centres as a "modern form of work", in fact, they have made us the proletariat of their "service and information society"!

Call Centres were and are an attack on the refusal of many office workers to accept a deterioration of their working conditions (in banks, insurance, telecom and other offices). For many workers call centres mean longer working hours, forced shift work, constant control and intensification of work. Working in call centres can sometimes mean stress, sometimes boredom, the obligation to be friendly and customer fobbing, not enough money and too many hours on the job. And while we aren't working in "dirty" factories, we nevertheless work under factory conditions…

Of course we're not alone in working long hours and putting up with crap conditions. In factories, offices, shops, warehouses and restaurants others face the same stresses and constant pressures. Collectively, 24 hours a day, we produce profits for the bosses. But by doing this we only increase these same stresses and pressures on each other!

Therefore it's down to us, the workers, to decide under which conditions we will work over the next few years. Our behaviour and our struggles will determine whether the bosses can speed up the work rhythm and "force" us to work overtime - or whether we take the initiative and set our own agenda.

By looking at how the work is organised, we can identify where our strength lies, and use this to improve our conditions. Often we work under the same conditions as hundreds of other workers, many of whom have also worked in other call centres and bring along their experience and contacts. So we don't need to feel isolated at work: we have the capability to organise ourselves for collective action.
Let's use it.

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It's Thursday morning and you've worked 8 hours every day this week. And that's on a part-time contract! But after paying rent, bus fare and bills there'll only be a tenner left until next pay day. Time to sign up for more overtime. Sound familiar?

Call centre bosses have realised over the last few decades that there's big money in tying us to computer screens with telephone cords, making and taking endless amounts of in- and outbound calls. On top of this they expect us to work more hours in the day, more days a week, as flexible as possible and "on call", while making or taking as many calls as possible to increase their profits.

This leaflet is written against the bosses attempts to constantly extend our working day to fit in with their demands for flexibility.

Who's Calling the Shots?

Increased competition in the service sector has forced companies to find new ways to maintain profit levels. While the bosses' solution has been to extend working hours and "flexibilise" the job, they have found an obstacle in the traditional 9-5 office job, with its above average working conditions. But the existence of call centres have allowed them to overcome this.

Preaching the new religion of "customer service", the bosses have justified extending total working hours far beyond what they were: many call centres are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, every day of the year. Why? Because the longer the office stays open the more profit they can make. As workers we are then expected to be available to work at their beck and call, whether this be evenings, nights, weekends or public holidays. But why else would we need 24 hr services if everybody else wasn't working all the hours god sends?

And to keep their production costs to a minimum, we only get paid for the actual hours and minutes that we are on-line. We don't get paid for lunch breaks, and other breaks are either unpaid or strictly monitored by the ACD (automatic call distributor). Who hasn't had a grilling for their break stats being one minute over the "agreed" time? In some places they even insist that work preparation, like logging on and off or reading instructions, has to be done in unpaid time. Just think: we spend the same time at work, but they are using breaks as one of their excuses to pay us less.

Calling in Sick

Working through temporary agencies has also meant that our paid holidays and sick days are reduced. The new employment laws are presented in our favour, but really they're for the bosses. We now don't qualify for either before we have worked for the same employer for 13 consecutive weeks. So if our contract ends before this, or if we take a week's break, they don't have to pay us anything - and we have to start all over again. On top of this, many agencies sneakily reduce our amount of paid holidays, usually by not paying public holidays. And even when we qualify for sick pay we only get paid after the third day of illness, by which time we also have to give the boss a doctor's note. So no more days of "pulling a sicky" to increase our meagre paid holidays. And how many times are we ill but end up working anyway, because we realise that we can't afford not to?

So not only does the qualifying period act as a discipline on us to turn up for work every day, but the bosses have also been able to extend our individual working hours: we have to work more days a year for exactly the same pay, or what is the same, we've had to accept a proportional decrease in our wage.

Calling Time

"Just-in-time" production methods, pioneered in factories, have also been extended to office work. By calculating the volume of work - in this case calls - that comes in and goes out, the bosses aim to employ the right number of staff to suit fluctuating work periods. Whereas in the past companies would have employed enough workers all year round to absorb the work, whether busy or slack, now they do the opposite: they keep staff levels to a bare minimum and "offer" workers overtime and extra shifts when times are busy. And if this isn't enough, they will take on a few more temps for a short time. Then when things slow down they get rid of them and refuse us extra shifts and overtime. In this way the bosses pay for workers only when they need them and we become their "just-in-time" workforce. This is the true meaning of flexibility. It may suit us at times, say if we have to think of child care or education, but it's used against us. Flexibility is not for our benefit, but a way for bosses to ensure that they only pay for work if and when they need it.

And as call centre bosses are well aware, there is no lack of demand for overtime and extra shifts. Having lowered our wages substantially from what they used to be in the "old" offices, they have made it a financial necessity to sign up for both. They use this as one of their main weapons against us: if we aren't good, obedient workers they can simply refuse us extra work. Overtime becomes a perk that will only be "awarded" to workers if their productivity stats are up to scratch. A sense of self-discipline is enforced to keep our productivity up during normal working hours.

However, past experience shows that taking up overtime and extra shifts only results in higher wages for a short time. After we've agreed to work longer hours on a regular basis, wages quickly drop to a level just high enough for living and going to work. Hence the average wage and living standard has fallen to its early-70s level, but the average working time has risen by about 5-10 hours a week. With constant price rises the bosses don't even need to cut wages. They can achieve exactly the same thing by not raising wages in line with inflation. So the introduction of regular overtime has achieved the same thing as the cuts in paid holidays and sick days: we have to work more hours a year just to survive! For those of us who took on a convenient part-time job, this has now become a full-time job! And for those who work full-time, the working hours just get longer and harder…

Calling Their Bluff

At the moment the bosses try to justify these measures by arguing that it is the only way to maintain profitability in the face of intense competition. But whether the motivation is pure greed or necessity is unimportant for us. The point is it's done at our expense! The supposedly ‘labour-saving' technology has done nothing but extend our working day. Because no matter how many computers they've got they can't make profits without us.

As workers we feel the necessity to fight and we show it all the time: ‘cheating' the clock/ACD for paid breaks, taking a (non-paid) sicky when the job becomes too stressful, or covering the phones for other workers if they need a break. But although these tactics can be a life-saver at times, they can only provide us with some individual relief in the face of worsening conditions. If we want to spend less time at work and have more time for the good things in life, we need to break out of our isolation.

We can start by getting together and discussing what the weakness is in our workplace. Because the bosses aim to employ the exact amount of workers needed for any given period, it means they are even more dependent on there being no interruptions in the work flow. And with the present fear of losing customers, any loss of calls leaves them even more vulnerable. Maybe we can find a way of using their ‘just-in time' production and competition to our advantage!


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