This article fills an important gap in our knowledge of call centres by focusing specifically on occupational ill-health. We document the recent emergence of health and safety concerns, assess the responses of employers and the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), critique the existing regulatory framework and present a holistic diagnostic model of occupationally induced ill-health. This model is utilized to investigate quantitative and qualitative data from a case study in the privatized utility sector, where the relative contributions to employee sickness and ill-health from factors relating to ergonomics, the built environment and work organization are evaluated. The principal conclusions are that the distinctive character of call-handling is the major cause of occupational ill-health and that effective remedial action would involve radical job re-design. Finally, the limitations of recent HSE guidance are exposed and industrial relations processes and outcomes analysed.
This paper locates the emergence of call centres within the broader political economy. We demonstrate how British Gas responded to privatisation, restrictive regulation and the need to deliver shareholder value by radically changing work organisation. Using documentary evidence and oral testimonies, we show how the call centre was pivotal to tightening control over the labour process, to intensifying work and transforming the experience of work.
This article presents a first hand account of the financial crisis by ‘Margaret Taylor’, a union activist within HBOS. Overviewing more than twenty years’ experience in the sector, Margaret highlights three types of change under way since the 1990s that she sees as antecedents of the present crisis: the shift from traditional pay structures to individualised, performance based pay; the entry of retail giants geared to aggressive marketing and maximising market share; and technological innovation which facilitated workforce deskilling. The testimony deepens our understanding of a significant, contemporary event and consistent with the aims of oral history, which influenced the interviewer’s approach, provides a glimpse into the lives of those who generally do not, or cannot record their stories.
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