leaflet on isi (bochum, essen, duesseldorf)

text in german
(Important note: The company ISI Marketing has got an injunction from a court (Landgericht Bochum) against the provider www.free.de. With this injunction www.free.de is threatened with a fine of 500.000 DM or six months in jail unless it stops to "1. call the company a 'xxxxxxxxxx' or 2. the offered jobs 'xxxxxxxxx'" Here is the leaflet without those terms.)

Working for free at ISI-marketing

My story is nothing special to moan about, it is an everyday story. In one way or another millions share my fate, but I don't read anything about it in "Amica" [so called "woman's magazin"] or WAZ [local newspaper]. I have a child and a stack of unpaid bills, the paid break for child's education is over, my name is not Barbara Becker: I need a job. Looking for a job is in itself unpaid labour: the stress of continually checking the ads in the job centre and running to job interviews. Jobs and refusals. Just another offer: telephone operator wanted, about 22 DM/hour (before taxes), company will care for your child during work-time.

Job interview at ISI-marketing. Many women work here. The woman from the personnel department promises beautiful things: weekends in the company owned BMW, trips to Egypt etc. if you sell more stuff on the phone than your fellow workers. All they are trying to do is to sweeten the job a bit which actually looks like this:

* 22 DM/hour...what else are you dreaming about? The basic wage is 12DM/hour (before taxes), the rest is un-guaranteed bonus.
* For the first week "working for free" is on the agenda: they make you a special offer of 12 hours training and 28 hours actual work on the phone for free. You do not have to pay, they do not pay you.
* During this period you are working without a contract: you will only get one if you have made enough money for the company. If you can not achieve two thirds of the sale's average you will not get a contract, you will have worked for nothing.
* Make up for the hours you wasted on sick leave by working extra later, or get you a wage cut: if you go to work although you are ill the company will pay you a so-called "sore throat-bonus". If you can not drag yourself to work, the company will help to speed up your recovery by making you work a little bit longer to make up for your lost hours or by cutting your already gained bonus.
* Working before work starts: necessary things you need to do for your work before the official work-time begins. If you have a call that runs over into the break, your break-time will be shortened.

After 25 hours "working for free" on the phone without the guarantee of getting a contract afterwards, I was fed up with it. I know that nothing is for free and that paradise is waiting for the poor and industrious, but there IS a limit god damn it! Everyone who applied for the job at the same time as me packed it in before getting a work-contract. Perhaps we could have resisted these conditions. Perhaps together we could have forced them to pay us the 40 hours work, pay us more money instead of un-guaranteed bonus, give us contracts right from the start...but we didn't try. We only knew each other for a short time, and had just few occasions to talk the workers who already had contracts, we were scared of getting into trouble. Now the search for a job continues for everyone on their own. If we are lucky we will find something better, although that is pretty unlikely...

I am not after "revenge". ISI-marketing is just doing what other companies do: they use our situation for further deterioration of the work-conditions. They make us work harder for less money because they are quiet sure that we "unprivileged" on the labour-market (older women, mothers, "unskilled", "immigrants") will hardly get anything better. By using the bonus-system they lower our wage and put the risk of offering an unsaleable product onto us. They extend the unpaid labour-time by calling the work "training" and "test-work" etc. They feel sure that we will not resist against these attacks because of all the unpaid bills, the office for immigration or other administrations in our back.

I know that many people are in a similar situation to me. I know that many blame themselves for not getting a better job or no job at all. Although I am not working for ISI anymore: I have written down this story because I will not put up with this alone and in silence any longer. At a certain point there is no point in individual "struggle for survival" anymore and the hope for a better job turns out to be an illusion. What is going on at ISI is no exception and it is not just bothering those who work there. By enforcing crap work-conditions in one company or region the employers put pressure on all the other workers, too. Therefore we have to find ways to fight back together. When we were working as "applicants" it would have helped us if the "permanents" had made a step towards us and told us how things are at ISI. Perhaps it would have built up enough confidence in each other to attack the black-mailing "contract for average sales-rate". We also noticed that there is practically no communication between workers from the different ISI call centres in this region (Essen, Bochum, Krefeld, Duesseldorf etc.). The bosses will use this isolation to play us off against each other, so we are distributing this leaflet in Essen, Bochum and Duesseldorf.

There are several ways to fight back: if they do not pay us the "training", breaks etc. all go on sick leave together. If they threaten us with wage-cuts we can show them who is actually phoning in the money by working slowly or not at all.

If they pay us shit we gonna pay them back!


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We work in call centers and elsewhere and produce a series of leaflets. That way we want to support and bring forward the discussion among workers. We do not have to put up with everything and can stand up together against work stress and the constraint to work. We can only do that by self-organizing and by finding ways - together with other workers - to react against management measures and to push through our own interests. Our strength lies in the fact that we can quickly agree with other workers on - for instance - refusing overtime, ignore boss's orders or reducing the call-rythm. Without the boss being prepared and without the mediation or control of representing bodies (german: Betriebsrat = works council) or unions. If we develope that strength and use it, that can be a step towards the overcoming of wage slavery altogether.
All leaflets are published - together with more information and contributions on the website: www.free.de/prol-position
Take part in the discussion and send us your ideas, critique and reports: Emails: hotlines@free.de
Letters: hotlines c/o Fabrik, Grabenstrasse 20, 47057 Duisburg


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