By Diane van den Broek *

There is no doubt that the ‘information age’ has spawned sophisticated computer technology which can collect, store and guide unprecedented amounts of information about unprecedented amounts of subjects. The exhaustive use of data lists for marketing and advertising show us the immense capacity of firms to track and manipulate consumer demand. More visually pervasive is the (over)use of closed circuit television in our public and private spaces. However such surveillance equipment utilised either in a public or private sphere, is not necessarily at odds with privacy as some technology enhances privacy while others serve to undermine it(Crompton, 2002). In a similar way technology built into organisation’s performance management systems can provide positive feedback in hands of some employers, while in the hands of others it may be used as a punitive measure on employees. Indeed technology does not of itself shape our social or industrial world because it does not operate in a political, social and cultural vacuum. Information and communication technologies are created and deployed by societies, markets and employers. As such surveillance practices are ‘situated in power relations and concurrent with our positions as consumers, as employees, as citizens, and as members of social and family groups’ (Ball, 2002, 4).

Privacy has been identified as a major casualty of surveillance technology. Increasingly privacy is identified as a central component of human dignity, without which ‘every decision is observed, and in a sense forced by the public gaze, not the moral code of the individual. This is not a good foundation for a society’(Crompton, 2002, 5). Neither is it a good foundation for contemporary workplaces, where the gaze has been particularly apparent. Employer’s ability to monitor the behaviour of their employees has not only escalated, but it has also diffused throughout the economy- from routine retail and service jobs to that holy grail of academia. For example Professor Patience, a senior academic in political science had his email disconnected by the Victoria University of Technology in 1999 after he made some unflattering comments about the university taking a $100,000 corporate box at the newly built Docklands stadium (Tebbutt, 1999).

Given these developments we need to ask whether workers should expect some level of organisational justice, involving not only procedural and distributive justice but also interactional justice(Beugre’, 1998). Interactional justice refers to how fairly procedures are carried out. Within the call centre context, this might involve decisions about the way technology is deployed. This article looks at how surveillance operates in call centres and how workers exposed to intense surveillance attempt to claw back some semblance of organisational justice, or fairness within their workplaces. In so doing it recognises that workers ability to resist the harsher aspects of surveillance technology rests on the nature of power relations within specific worksites.

Call Centre Surveillance
Call centre workers are an interesting group of workers for several reasons. Firstly about 4% of US, 2% of UK, and 1.3% of the European working population work in call centres & it constitutes about 25% employment growth in Australia and there’s considerable growth in countries such as Singapore and India (Datamonitor, 1996,1998). Workers here are also at the frontline of a service economy which has resulted from competitiveness within what Druker describes as ‘knowledge capital’ (Druker, 2000). While there may often be little ‘knowledge’ transferred within the average call centres, there is usually no lack of surveillance equipment. A cursory visit within most call centres reveal the widespread placement of visual display boards flashing abundant statistics interspersed with other motivational mobiles.

The research presented here results from a combination of lengthy semi-structured audio taped interviews, telephone interviews and written interviews undertaken during the 1990s and early 2000 in two large Australian telecommunication firms. In total 60 interviews were undertaken, comprising 29 employees, 7 union officials and 24 managerial staff. Non-participant observation of team meetings and the labour process also took place.

The deluge of research in the area has ensured that many of us are familiar with a call centre working environment. The technology involves the combination of computer and telephone technology controlled by Automatic Call Distribution(ACD) systems which feed calls automatically into workers headsets. Customer service representatives (CSRs) organised in ‘pods’ or teams are literally plugged into headsets which connect their VDU and telephone technology into the ACD system.

CSRs are expected to arrive at work ten minutes before their shifts commence so they can take calls on the first minute of their shift. Daily reports list call volume taken by each CSR, average call time to complete calls and the number of outgoing calls made by CSRs. These statistics and results for each sales campaign are then measured and displayed on white-boards visible to all CSRs on the floor (Internal Company Document; Interview Employee 1996; Interview Team Leader, 1996). For CSRs the work-tasks monitored and displayed include

• Length of call
• Time period between calls
• Politeness toward customer
• Call taping & review
• Mystery shoppers
• Content of telephone calls
• Adherence to scripts
• Adherence to set procedure
• Satisfaction measures

Such detailed levels of monitoring have led some call centres to initiate ‘Big Brother’ committees, and the mainstream media have provided some pretty stark accounts call centre operations(Frenkel & Donoghue, 1996: 13). In 1996 one Australian newspaper described how a central computer monitored how CSRs spend every second of their day. The precise time the employee took to complete each "wrap up" (the administrative work relating to an inquiry); how long each employee took for meal breaks and toilet breaks(Long, 1996, 16). A more recent British newspaper informed readers of one quaint London call centre manager who equipped himself with nappies to distribute to employees who took the longest toilet breaks. Presumably this was a threat that wasn’t followed through, but the threat itself raises serious enough questions about privacy, human dignity and acceptable levels of monitoring and work intensification. For example in many of the call centres I researched it was not unusual to find that staff were expected to raise their hand, or gain permission from their supervisor, to use bathroom facilities within their workplace.

Contributions
These issues are not raised to argue the histrionics of totalitarian control regimes now being used in contemporary workplaces. They are raised to illuminate the levels of monitoring which has become associated with call centre operations. Call centres have been variously described as ‘electronic sweatshops’ with workers requiring an ‘assembly-line in the head’ to undertake their work. Much of the call centre literature has emphasised factory-like division of labour and the existence of intense employee monitoring (Taylor and Bain, 1999; van den Broek, 2002). Even those who are more optimistic about call centres as a form of service work, still describe them as customer-oriented bureaucracies (Frenkel et al, 1999).

However to some researchers, these workplaces represent distinctly new managerial control systems where employees are ‘constantly visible and the supervisors power…rendered perfect’-via the computer monitoring screen making managerial control obsolete(Fernie and Metcalf, 1997, 3, 10). Small levels of trade union membership amongst workers in the industry has contributed to the perception that not only are employees exposed to new totalitarian managerial control systems, but that they are imprisoned in panopticons, strangled by a panoply of technical, bureaucratic and cultural control techniques. Worse still workers are now ‘self-disciplining’ subjects who appear unable to resist control manifest in surveillance technology. But fortunately it is never that one-sided. As indicated here, the levels of organisational or interactional justice workers achieve results from the negotiable nature of power relations within these particular workplaces, rather than the surveillance technology per se.

Challenges for human resource management
Contemporary management is well placed to monitor employee activities, however research suggesting total control ignores fundamental aspects of workplace relations. While many call centres utilise extensive surveillance and monitoring systems, they often do so in combination with worker involvement schemes designed to elicit commitment. For example Taylor and Bain’s study of 108 Scottish call centres found that 98% of call centres used team briefings, 69% suggestion schemes, 44% quality circles, 83% newsletters, and 54% videos. Similarly Australian research undertaken in 1998 indicated that three quarters of call centre operators were organised around team structures (ACA Research, 1998, 19; Taylor & Bain, 1999, 107). The existence of these techniques does not necessarily mean that employees have significant input in decisions that influence their work, but they do indicate that there is no clear dichotomy between intensive surveillance systems and other techniques designed to foster commitment(van den Broek, D, Callaghan, G & Thompson, P., 2002).

CSR responses to the surveillance and work intensification are as varied as the call centres in which they work. However task repetition and stress are the major issues facing many workers within routine call centre operations and turnover and absentee rates reflect this. While the average turnover rate in the industry is around 19%, it can be as high as 75% in outsourced call centres. At an average cost of around $10,000 per employee, this presents a significant problem for some employers, while a necessary evil for others (Australia Call Centre Research Report, 26,57) Indeed turnover may be encouraged by managers. One manager I spoke to said that between 12 to 18 months employees were ‘hitting the end of the road’, in which case management took a ‘sacrificial’ HR strategy. This strategy involved managerial acceptance of high turnover and the frequent replacement of burnout employees with a fresh crop of motivated and enthusiastic employees (Interview Team Leader, 1995; Wallace et al, 2000).

Quantitative data also indicate that call centre agents have higher stress levels than coal or gold miners, with the cost of stress-related absenteeism assessed at $150 per employee (ACA Research, 1998: 3). Work intensification which result from intense output targets and monitoring are also of major concern here. A recent ACTU survey of 1,000 call centre workers in 88 Australian call centres found that almost 50% of workers never received a five minute break away from their telephones each hour to conduct non-telephone based work for customers. Similarly, a large scale survey of staff within the firm I studied found that the average 12 day sick leave taken during 1998 was due to job satisfaction, management of wrap time and lack of job variety (ACTU, 2002, 3; Deery & Iverson, 1998: 6).

Given the call centre labour process, CSRs are also seeking collective representation. The ACTU survey cited above found that only half of these workers felt free to be part of a union (ACTU, 2002, 4). Despite the apparent anti-unionism of many call centre operations, there are increasing signs of employee mobilisation within the industry (van den Broek, 2001). As with the TUC in the UK, the ACTU has orchestrated its own monitoring system through the establishment of the website, Call Central. This is an interactional web page dedicated to call centre workers which collates feedback from workers on issues such as work intensification, managerial bullying and stress injuries like toxic shock. The centralisation and consolidation of union coverage within the industry and the possibility of negotiating an industry award has also led to some encouraging signs with overall call centre union rates rising from 10% in 2000 to 30% by 2002 (ACTU, 2002)

Less formal and individual CSR behaviour also attempted to subvert surveillance technology and influence the pace of work. CSRs made themselves aware of when supervisors were remotely monitoring their calls and modified behaviour accordingly. ‘Flicking’, that is hanging-up on customers, redirecting calls to other areas of the corporation, or switching phones to ambiguous settings were also common practices. (Interview Employees, 1995, 1996, 1997,2002). One employee at the firm I studied, stated that between 10% and 20% of customers were ‘flicked’ each day (Radio Interview, 2000).

Discussion
Employee surveillance within call centres are not one-sided processes, but rather are situated within the power relations of CSRs and their employers. As citizens we appear to have accepted the trade-off between liberty, privacy and the surveillance of CCTV in our public spaces. So too CSRs within the call centres I researched were, within limits, unfazed by the intense use of monitoring. For example while only 40 percent of CSRs within one of the firms I looked at disliked performance statistics used to measure performance, 92 percent expressed concern over excessive workloads. Similarly Bain and Taylor’s survey of Scottish call centres found that 82 percent of CSRs thought that output targets put pressure on them, while fewer than 22 percent felt it came from computer monitoring (Bain & Taylor, 1999: 10; Deery & Iverson, 1998: 8).

CSRs within the call centres were not involved in decisions with superiors about the deployment of technology. As such they received little organisational or interactional justice within their workplaces. However turnover, absenteeism, increasing unionisation and individual acts illustrate their attempt to claw back fair practices by subverting the work intensification associated with monitoring. While CSRS appeared unfazed by surveillance technology, what they did resist was the way management deployed technology to intensify work by continually increasing output targets. As such the issue is not the technology per se, but rather the way the technology has been deployed and manipulated by firms to increase workloads and speed-up work practices.

Further it should be remembered that surveillance at work and within wider society have ‘distinctive actors, mechanisms and issues that cannot be credibly tied together in one overarching narrative’(Thompson, 2002, 10) More to the point, while the shape, size and colour of technology may be new, shifts in the effort bargain retains an enduring and central place within capital/labour relations.

References
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ACTU, 2002, Call Centre Wages and Conditions Report of Survey Findings, April.
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van den Broek, D., (2002) ‘Monitoring and Surveillance in Call Centres: Some Responses from Australian Workers’, Labour & Industry, 12:3 May
van den Broek, D, Callaghan, G & Thompson, P., (2002) ‘Call Centres: Exploring the Team Paradox’, 6th International Workshop on Teamworking, Malmo, Sweden.
Wallace, C Eagleson, G & Waldersee, R, (2000), ‘The Sacrificial HR Strategy in Call Centres’, International Journal of Service Industry Management, 11:2, pp 174-184.

* Diane van den Broek is a lecturer in Work and Organisational Studies, University of Sydney