Blood, Sweat and Tears - The 21st Century Sweat Shops

UNI Telecom Global Union  28 October 2011 10:58:36

The Communications Workers of America has long campaigned for improved wages and conditions for customer service representatives. You can follow their blog here http://cwacustomerservice.org/ to follow the discussions about the problems workers face daily in call centres. Below is the opening to their open forum discussions:


Blood Sweat and Tears - The 21st Century Sweat Shops

By definition, a sweatshop is: Any workplace where the wages are inadequate, the hours too long, and the working conditions endanger safety or health - whether or not any laws are violated.

The call center and customer service environment of today is well defined as an “Electronic Sweat Shop.” Every breath, keystroke, word, screen shot and every minute spent in the restroom is monitored by the Company. This behavior is in effort to make sure they can get every second of the day to become more productive than it was yesterday.  By establishing metrics, requirements, goals, talk time, customer  handling, scripting, product count (the list goes on) they have taken over the employee’s right to be human.  The Company has bypassed the option for it employees to have a life. The Company has no regard for the health and well being of its employees. In the Company’s vision, STRESS has become a food group and they are more than willing to make sure it is fed to the employees on a daily basis. Absolutely no concept of a life outside of the work place. The bottom line has become the only line.

For the full discussion posts click the link => http://cwacustomerservice.org/forum/topics/the-21st-century-sweat-shops

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