‘Get paid, get out’: online resistance to call centre labour in Canada

• Author: Matthew S. Johnston,Genevieve Johnston,Matthew D. Sanscartier,Mark Ramsay
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12125
• Published date: 01 March 2019
• Date: 01 March 2019

© 2018 Brian Towers (BRITOW) and

John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Online Resistance to Call Centre Labour 1

New Technology, Work and Employment 34:1

ISSN 1468-005X

‘Get paid, get out’: online resistance to call

centre labour in Canada

Matthew S. Johnston , Genevieve Johnston,

Matthew D. Sanscartier and Mark Ramsay

This qualitative content analysis of 503 anonymous online

reviews of 52 Canadian call centres posted on RateMyEmploy-

er.ca explores how forms of resistance, alienation and emotion-

al labour are expressed outside of the workplace. Our study

finds that digital publics are producing emotive insurgencies

and networks of support within marginalised communities

that undermine employers’ attempts at deadening the work-

force. The reviews exemplify worker awareness of exploitation

as some connect these issues to broader socio- economic fac-

tors that are beyond their control. While many offer tactics to

challenge and destabilise their working conditions and culture

as well as heartfelt and sarcastic warnings of what one might

expect if they pursue call centre employment, others use the on-

line space as a means of venting frustrations, eliciting empa-

thies and expressing sentiments of hope(lessness).

Keywords: call centres, digital publics, denunciation, emotion-

al labour, qualitative content analysis, online research.

Introduction

There was once a time when ofce work was considered by many to be superior to the

more physically demanding realms of retail, warehouse and food service employment.

Matthew S. Johnston (matthew.johnston3@carleton.ca) is a PhD candidate in the Department of So-

ciology and Anthropology at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. He has published a number of

journal articles on the topics of gender, security and mental health, most notably in Qualitative Research,

Men and Masculinities, Crime Media Culture, Gender, Work & Organization, Social Movement Studies, and

Punishment & Society. In addition to his work on private security, social institutions, hegemonic mascu-

linity, and transgender students. Matthew is interested in exploring how persons labelled as mentally

ill navigate their involvement with the psychiatric apparatus.

Genevieve Johnston is a PhD student and SSHRC Vanier Scholar in the Department of Sociology and

Anthropology at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. Her research interests include youth home-

lessness, radical social movements, anarchism, total liberation, critical feminism, intersectionality and

marginalised populations. Her doctoral work will explore experiences of agency and resistance among

homeless and street- involved youth in Canada. She has published an article in Social Movement Studies,

SAGE Research Methods, and Canadian Review of Sociology.

Matthew D. Sanscartier is a PhD candidate and SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholar in the Department

of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. His research focuses on

advancing a political sociology of populism, and has recently been featured in Economy and Society,

Journal of Gambling Studies, International Journal of Qualitative Methods, and Canadian Review of Sociology.

Mark Ramsay is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton Uni-

versity in Ottawa, Canada. His research interests include labour, mobilities, new media culture, and

science and technology studies. His doctoral research examines the role of affective labour in managing

and organising ows of people as they move through an airport space.

2 New Technology, Work and Employment © 2018 Brian Towers (BRITOW) and

John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

No industry has repudiated this assumption more soundly than the call centre.

Characterised by the presence of demanding supervisors, uncomfortable workspaces,

violations of employment standards acts, increasingly unattainable performance targets

and the ever- present threat of being unjustly red, call centres have thoroughly tarnished

the reputation of ofce work (Thompson, 2003; Korczynski, 2005; Lloyd, 2012).

Amidst the precarity and decline of North American economies, technology contin-

ues to revolutionise work life in the 21st century (Taylor et al., 2014; Messenger and

Gschwind, 2016; Edwards and Ramirez, 2017). In Canada, the increased outsourcing of

call centre labour to countries such as China and India has led to increased labour skill

requirements in domestic call centres (Vincent and McKeown, 2008). Most of these call

centres are ununionised. Women make up the majority of call centre workers in all

elds with the exception of the better- paid position of user support technician, and in

Canada, call centre workers are younger than in other industries, with 50 per cent of

employees aged 35 and under, in contrast to 38 per cent in this age range in the total

employed labour force (Contact Centre Canada, 2009). The intensifying gap between

educational attainment and lucrative, stable employment prospects in the contempo-

rary era inevitably results in a signicant proportion of the population becoming frus-

trated in their employment aspirations (Fuller and Stecy- Hildebrandt, 2014).

Call centre employees across the world engage in a variety of forms of resistance in

the workplace (Lloyd, 2016), yet how they mobilise their struggle outside of the con-

nes of the ofce and across company lines has yet to be examined in the literature.

This study draws on an analysis of 503 anonymous online reviews, written by former

and current employees of 52 Canadian call centres and posted on the website

RateMyEmployer.ca between 2012 and 2016. Our ndings reassert that call centre

work is alienated work, and that alienated workers, through online spaces where they

denounce their co- workers and employers, form ‘digital publics’ that provide a collec-

tive coping mechanism and an aegis with respect to their oppressive and utterly dom-

inating work conditions. In building a digital public, workers refuse the virtues and

values imposed by a corporate structure and, by denouncing them online, turn virtue

into vice; these vices are replaced with a set of values that lead to strategic, emotive,

and cunning methods of rebellion that can build solidarity among vulnerable and mar-

ginalised populations. More specically, the reviewers who make up this online com-

munity of critique share narratives that emphasise workers’ potential to indirectly but

affectively resist mechanisms of social control which employers draw on to create a

docile and subservient workforce.

Suppression, surveillance and resistance in call centres

Existing literature on call centres across the globe often paints a grim portrait of

‘modern- day sweatshops’ (Fernie and David, 1998) that are dened by monotonous

work, poor working conditions (Taylor et al., 2002), poverty- level wages (Lloyd, 2012)

and high turnover rates (Taylor and Bain, 1999; Hechanova, 2013). Call centre manag-

ers view turnover rates ranging up to 70 per cent as a necessary evil (Bain and Taylor,

2000), as only those who are ‘tough enough’ to deal with the high levels of stress are

expected to survive (Holdsworth and Cartwright, 2003; Holman, 2003; Deery et al.,

2010). Although presumably some call centres are clean, comfortable workplaces with

supportive and fair managers, various issues noted in the literature include time pres-

sure, a lack of supervisory support, intensive monitoring, angry clients, and heavily

policed meal and toilet breaks, not to mention cramped, dirty and even (in extreme

cases) insect or rodent- infested workspaces which contribute to acute and chronic

illnesses among staff (Holman et al., 2002; Taylor et al., 2002, 2003; Barnes, 2007; D’Cruz

and Noronha, 2008; Deery et al., 2010). Many employees construct call centre work as

a form of temporary and transitional labour until better opportunities arise (Lloyd,

2012), yet in the precarious job market dominated by similarly low- paying service jobs,

opportunities are often scarce and may also pose risks to workers’ emotional and phys-

ical well- being (Vosko, 2006; Lewchuk et al., 2011).