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Working the Phones: Control and Resistance in Call Centers
Call centers have become a near-ubiquitous site of employment in our late capitalist world, with over a million people working there in the United Kingdom alone. The call center has become synonymous with low-paid, high-stress work under dictatorial supervision and precarious contracts. With Working the Phones , Jamie Woodcock draws on time spent employed in a non-unionized call center to take the public beyond anecdotal impressions to a true picture of what work is like there. Focusing in particular on methods of control and resistance within the highly regulated environment, Woodcock shows how call centers have become sadly emblematic of the post-industrial service economy.
- GenresLaborEconomicsNonfiction
272 pages, Paperback
Published December 15, 2016
6 people are currently reading
178 people want to read
About the author
Jamie Woodcock
14 books19 followersDr Jamie Woodcock is a researcher based in London and a senior lecturer at King's College London. He is the author of books including Troublemaking (Verso, 2023), Employment (Routledge, 2023), The Fight Against Platform Capitalism (University of Westminster Press, 2021), The Gig Economy (Polity, 2019), Marx at the Arcade (Haymarket, 2019), and Working the Phones (Pluto, 2017).
His research is available to read online and has been featured widely in the media. It is inspired by workers' inquiry and focuses on labour, work, the gig economy, platforms, resistance, organising, and videogames. He is on the editorial board of Notes from Below and Historical Materialism.
Jamie completed his PhD in sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London and has held positions at Goldsmiths, University of Leeds, University of Manchester, Queen Mary, NYU London, Cass Business School, the LSE, the University of Oxford, and the Open University.
His research is available to read online and has been featured widely in the media. It is inspired by workers' inquiry and focuses on labour, work, the gig economy, platforms, resistance, organising, and videogames. He is on the editorial board of Notes from Below and Historical Materialism.
Jamie completed his PhD in sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London and has held positions at Goldsmiths, University of Leeds, University of Manchester, Queen Mary, NYU London, Cass Business School, the LSE, the University of Oxford, and the Open University.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
January 24, 2018
I fully enjoyed Woodcock's book. I am an experienced laborer who served for 10 years in call centers of every industry: sales, nonprofit, lead generation, online education inquiries, inbound & outbound, debt collections, utilities, payroll, tax research, alarm security, telecommunications, technical support, healthcare, and pyramid scheme accounts. And, the findings in this book's conclusions directly apply to my experiences in all call centers I worked in. From Sutherland Global Services, Concentrix, ADT Security, and 5linx, to Corelogic, Direct2Market, Maximus, CallVista, EHealth Technologies, and Conserve, every experience I had strongly paralleled the findings in Woodcock's study.
Woodcock performed a case study in a U.K.-based sales call center. The purpose of the study was to "identify a shift from the exploitation of the bodies of workers during the Fordist mode of production to exploiting the minds of workers in increasingly larger numbers" (Woodcock, 2017, p. 55). Woodcock used qualitative methods and perspectives to analyze call center phenomena which included Marxist philosophy, ethnography, narrative analysis, Taylorism, and the concept of the Panopticon.
The conclusions stated the following results:
a) The arrangement of the call-center floor resembles a Panopticon in that the supervisors are arranged in order to intensely surveillance the call agents for physical performance and observe their computer screens.
b) Call-center workplaces operate with the created sense of "precariousness" around the workers. The workers are made to feel that their employment is unstable, insecure, and can be immediately lost without due process and for the slightest error. The constant feeling and warning of precarious employment from management causes the reps to submit themselves into the acceptance of capitalistic exploitation (Woodcock, 2017, p. 136).
c) The push for unionization has been stifled by too much turnover and managerial bullying.
d) The style of Taylorist management has transcended from the factory lines of the 20th century to the call centers of the 21st century. Woodcock (2017) described this aspect as a shift from factory workers to "chain workers": reps who "sit at their terminals in front of a screen, repeating everyday the same operation a thousand times", and are "an appendage to a new kind of machine" (p. 155).
e) The managers have created a highly controlling environment in which the struggle between capital and labor remains a constant theme among the reps and their supervisors. The constant call surveillance, low wages, high stress, precarious employment, draining emotional labor, and pervasive electronic surveillance present daily toxicity to the reps.
f) Sales call centers constantly subject reps to high expectations of numbers and aggressive sales targets. However, my experience showed me that nonprofit centers also subject their reps to high targets in order to meet quantitative goals set by strategic management. When the goals are significantly high in supposedly nonprofit (charity) centers, the image of that operation does not remain as that of a charity; rather, it is still a highly controlled operation with a capitalistic incentive.
g) Call center reps also suffer from the exhaustive mental labor of fearing any deviance from call scripts which they must comply with during every call everyday. In essence, they suffer from the dehumanizing effect of toxic surveillance and subjective judgments of call analysts during their daily shifts.
Woodcock performed a case study in a U.K.-based sales call center. The purpose of the study was to "identify a shift from the exploitation of the bodies of workers during the Fordist mode of production to exploiting the minds of workers in increasingly larger numbers" (Woodcock, 2017, p. 55). Woodcock used qualitative methods and perspectives to analyze call center phenomena which included Marxist philosophy, ethnography, narrative analysis, Taylorism, and the concept of the Panopticon.
The conclusions stated the following results:
a) The arrangement of the call-center floor resembles a Panopticon in that the supervisors are arranged in order to intensely surveillance the call agents for physical performance and observe their computer screens.
b) Call-center workplaces operate with the created sense of "precariousness" around the workers. The workers are made to feel that their employment is unstable, insecure, and can be immediately lost without due process and for the slightest error. The constant feeling and warning of precarious employment from management causes the reps to submit themselves into the acceptance of capitalistic exploitation (Woodcock, 2017, p. 136).
c) The push for unionization has been stifled by too much turnover and managerial bullying.
d) The style of Taylorist management has transcended from the factory lines of the 20th century to the call centers of the 21st century. Woodcock (2017) described this aspect as a shift from factory workers to "chain workers": reps who "sit at their terminals in front of a screen, repeating everyday the same operation a thousand times", and are "an appendage to a new kind of machine" (p. 155).
e) The managers have created a highly controlling environment in which the struggle between capital and labor remains a constant theme among the reps and their supervisors. The constant call surveillance, low wages, high stress, precarious employment, draining emotional labor, and pervasive electronic surveillance present daily toxicity to the reps.
f) Sales call centers constantly subject reps to high expectations of numbers and aggressive sales targets. However, my experience showed me that nonprofit centers also subject their reps to high targets in order to meet quantitative goals set by strategic management. When the goals are significantly high in supposedly nonprofit (charity) centers, the image of that operation does not remain as that of a charity; rather, it is still a highly controlled operation with a capitalistic incentive.
g) Call center reps also suffer from the exhaustive mental labor of fearing any deviance from call scripts which they must comply with during every call everyday. In essence, they suffer from the dehumanizing effect of toxic surveillance and subjective judgments of call analysts during their daily shifts.
January 6, 2021
Very interesting and accessible Marxist analysis of the nature of work in call centres. I particularly enjoyed the following insights:
1. That the nature of work under capitalism is inherently precarious, and that we shouldn’t fall into the trap of believing work was made precarious/casualised/insecure as a result of the neoliberal turn of the 70s/80s; and
2. That resistance in the workplace takes many forms, beyond what we traditionally conceptualise as resistance (strikes, days of action, etc).
I’d recommend this book to anyone interested in the future of work, and the future of resistance and organising in the workplace!
1. That the nature of work under capitalism is inherently precarious, and that we shouldn’t fall into the trap of believing work was made precarious/casualised/insecure as a result of the neoliberal turn of the 70s/80s; and
2. That resistance in the workplace takes many forms, beyond what we traditionally conceptualise as resistance (strikes, days of action, etc).
I’d recommend this book to anyone interested in the future of work, and the future of resistance and organising in the workplace!
December 30, 2016
an excellent book. woodcock includes incredibly moving and funny anecdotes, deftly gliding between narrative and analysis, while observing and working the phone. thankfully the book doesn't end with observations only, its also a story of refusal, resistance, and reclamation. brilliant read, highly recommended!
December 3, 2018
I think this would only be useful if you yourself have never worked in customer service and you don't know anyone else who did either. It doesn't say anything new or useful and is actually very patronising.
June 8, 2021
Woodcock's book 'Working the Phones' is an overview of his efforts to employ the operaist method of workers' inquiry, with the aim of this method developed into militant co-research, in an undisclosed call centre in the UK. Woodcock's description, often using pop culture references, of the technical and political composition of his specific call centre workplace, as well as a Marxist analysis of how call centres fit into the modern economy, is insightful and extremely interesting. However, whilst the efforts of Woodcock are very admirable (he states that after 6 months of working there he was one of the longest-working employees of his batch of hires, and beginnings of worker organisation occur in part due to his efforts), the constraints of formal academia upon his attempts to bridge the gap between political intervention and research are obvious, and the research is limited, by Woodcock's own admission, by his failure in being able to integrate others into a co-research process, despite his efforts to do so. However, this is still a tremendously enjoyable and important book, and I particularly enjoyed Woodcock's discussion towards the latter half with a worker who had organised in a call centre for a number of years.
February 3, 2021
A fascinating analysis of power and control in a call centre, based on deep ethnographic research. I particularly enjoyed the analysis of forms of resistance.
I struggled with the authors description of Union organising as a solution, without recognising the power and control arising in unions themselves
I struggled with the authors description of Union organising as a solution, without recognising the power and control arising in unions themselves
December 20, 2018
I'm biased because I know & work with the author (through Notes From Below), but this is a useful Marxist analysis of call centres and how they fit into the wider economy.
May 6, 2020
A detailed yet easy-to-read account of exactly what the title promises
July 23, 2018
This book was a fast read, extremely accessible and painted a vivid picture of call center work. If you want a preview of the book, there's an article in Viewpoint magazine called "Smile Down the Phone" by the author. Woodcock not only discusses the precarious nature of working at a call center, but also dissects control of human interaction, scientific management theories, and forms of worker resistance. He grounds his observations in a greater socialist philosophy, pulling from Capital, and worker movements in France and Italy. There's a question of the relevance of this information in the West, now that call centers are largely outsourced to the Global South, but I think that it is and still could be.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews