seeboard/portslade.england

text in german
From the hotlines-leaflet from Brighton (March 2001):

I work in Seeboard (the electricity company) customer service in Portslade. The call centre floors are pretty daunting, with constant chatter and beeping. To start you must find any seat and take it over from the previous worker as they finish their last call, with no time wasted while they're packing their possessions as they leave.
As soon as you're settled and logged in, the calls start coming in, and as soon as you finish one call the computer automatically puts you on to the next call, leaving no time whatsoever in between to catch a breath or to recover from a stressful and emotionally draining call. You're on call constantly apart from the 15 minute break every six hours, and they make every possible effort to make sure that this time is monitored and controlled. To go to the toilet, you need to ask your team leader for permission, who come and dial the code that allows you to go. If you try and leave your desk without asking for permission the computer will deduct the time from your wages. In this way they can keep track of everything you do while at work. In some departments you are not even allowed to talk to each other, and we get told off quite often for chatting.
There is a high turnover of workers at Seeboard –not surprising considering the conditions of work. But this also works out well for Seeboard since it imposes a kind of ‘collective amnesia': only a few workers can see the worsening of conditions over time, while most workers who just get the job for a short period do not seem willing to put up a fight. But we can use this against the company. If we are only going to stay for a while, we don't have much to lose anyway…


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