leaflet on workers' struggles

text in german    testo in italiano
Here is the main article of the fourth leaflet (July 2001).
You can find the reports on specific strikes and conflicts in call centers under:
citibank/bochum
british telecom/britain
audioservice/berlin
hotline gmbh/berlin
adm/berlin
verizon/usa
isi/bochum.essen.duesseldorf

Pilots of the telephones:
Without you no receiver can take off!

The bosses and their profits are in crisis and we are supposed to carry the can for that: in call centers, factories, on construction sites and in offices we are supposed to work for less money, sometimes more, sometimes less hours - in some cases even all around the clock. * The bosses hire many people as temporary workers so they can get rid of them quickly. * It is not only in the New Economy that we see more rationalisation and redundancies, while the bosses threaten us with the relocation to "cheap labour-countries". * The public service, for instance the local traffic service, is getting more and more privatized, which means that the workers there are doing the same work for less pay. * And with the "lazy person"-campaign (of the german chancellor Schroeder) the unemployed are put under even more pressure to accept "low paid-jobs".
These attacks by the bosses are not just happening in Germany or Western Europe: worldwide workers are confronted with them.

In recent times we have seen only few workers’ struggles which could overcome the defensive situation and serve as an example for other sectors of exploitation. Maybe the pilots of Lufthansa who managed to strike for a few days and to get a nearly 30 percent pay-rise this spring. In this way they found an answer to the "tighten your belt"-situation of the last few years. But is this also possible in other sectors where workers do not fly airplanes worth millions?

Most other conflicts stayed symbolic actions, like the recent warning strikes of bus-drivers and retail-workers. There collective agreements ended up under 3 percent, less than inflation.

In call centers
the boom of the past three years, where in Ruhrgebiet/Germany you could always get a job on the phone, seems over. Workers are getting fired depending on the "market situation". Whenever new ones are hired they are asked more and more for "work experience" and one of those "call center certificates". The turnover, especially in the badly paid and stressful jobs remains, high.

In recent times there were some open conflicts and struggles in call centers. We need to look at them more in detail in order to learn for the confrontations coming up. We hope that those won’t be just about the defence of the exciting conditions but also about the question who controls our life. That question will move into the center if we determine how and what we struggle for - and if we do not leave that to some union apparatus or representatives.

Confrontations so far
The open workers’ struggles in call centers were officially about the level of income, the resistance against attempts of the bosses, who try to increase the pressure on the workers (through the hiring of temporary workers, the relocation or closure of firms, day-labourer-contracts), and about attacks on the workers’ "dignity" (through technological control, management despotism etc.). So the struggles are about similar things as in other sectors (factories, offices...). In this leaflet you can find a selection of reports on conflicts in call centers. Apart from Verizon we had direct contact to workers of all companies. We have seen roughly two kinds of conflicts: 1) more or less union-controlled strikes like the one at Citibank, British Telecom and Verizon, and 2) smaller, self-organised actions of workers in call centers in Berlin (Audioservice, Hotline GmbH and ADM).

1) The limit of the strikes at Citibank, Verizon and British Telecom was this: the workers took part in the union-controlled actions but did not find their own (!) ways of organising the struggles and win against the bosses. So the unions and other "workers’ representatives" could reduce the confrontation to strike- and bargaining-rituals and use the anger of the workers as lever against the bosses. At Citibank and British Telecom the strikes stayed more "symbolic" actions which did not yield anything. However, at Verizon the workers were determined enough to strike for two weeks. They accomplished some of their aims - as part of a collective agreement. Liberating experiences of collective activity and the feeling of their own strength in these strikes only developed where workers themselves carried out the actions, organised the pickets, attacked scabs, etc.
Unions and other structures of representation are no answer to the attacks of the bosses: they are straitjacketed by the legal framework (their commitment to keep the "peace", the collective agreement-stuff...). They divide us even more through their focus on professions and "nation states" and cannot escape the bosses’ logic of profits and productivity (see for instance the renouncement of 10 percent of the wage at HP and the low wage model for newly hired at VW).

2) Still, if workers self-organise struggles, those are not becoming powerful and exciting events just on their own. That shows when we look at the actions of workers in Berlin. There the daily co-operation - and the connection outside of work - was the basis for workers acting against the bosses. They organised meetings, discussed collective actions, etc. Still, in confrontation with the companies they chose defensive measures: petitions, works council elections, industrial tribunals and calls for union-support. We do not know why they did not have a bigger self-confidence in their own strength. It is for sure, that despite or even because of these defensive measures the bosses could play their cards: in the mentioned cases they fired people because they did not expect a strong reaction (occupation of the work-place, demonstrations to other call centers or other companies nearby...). This experience shows clearly that petitions, laws and negotiations do not push through anything, if there is no real workers’ strength behind them - the ability to strike, to slow down the work process even with only a few determined workers, to endanger the bosses’ profits.
These open confrontations in call centers remained exceptions. Usually we react to work stress and problems with the bosses individually: calling in sick, slow work and job-hopping make our life easier. But we are more and more often confronted with problems which we cannot solve individually or through collaboration with the management (suggestions for improvements...): compulsory overtime, hiring of temporary workers, threats with the re-location of the company etc. These situations demand other measures!
Even more so, because in many call centers the bosses are experimenting with more productive technologies (IVRs, internet service). During these experiments they are even more dependent on our work because they have already invested money into the technology but it is not running in a profitable way. For instance, we are supposed to make up for the technical problems. In the long run the introduction of these technologies is undermining our strength and will lead to increased work stress and redundancies - unless we act against it in this transitional phase and sabotage the bosses’ strategies.

Developing struggles
We can fight back where we come and where it hurts the bosses most. The co-operation with other workers enables us to fight against the various adversities of everyday work: we need to communicate daily with other workers in order to get our work done "properly". We are in contact with people from different departments, work-sites and "professions". Without this unofficial co-operation the companies would collapse.

We can turn this form of organising around (instead of customer data we exchange tips for sabotage or strike information) and in collective actions push things through against the bosses. We do not need "outside" organising here, which "represents" us (like works councils or unions).

Our answer to the crisis and the bosses’ attacks can not be modesty and renouncement. We need to put our own needs in the center and fight for them.

Questions?
We cannot present general proposals of how to get out of the defensive situation. But we can - starting from the previous struggles - ask questions which can help us:
* Which forms of struggle correspond with our immediate abilities and needs: collective "work-to-rule", other forms of sabotage, open strikes...?
* Where can we hit the bosses hard: when lots of callers are in the queue, during test-phases of new technologies...?
* How can we overcome the company-walls in order to undermine the bosses’ attempts to use workers in other call centers as scabs?
* How can we establish connections to the struggles of workers in other sectors and learn from each other - because we are fighting against similar conditions?
* How can we do all this without putting our fate in the hands of a union- or other apparatus?

The answers can be found only in the struggles themselves!

[box on the whole series:]

Hotlines 4: the last part of the series
This is the fourth and last of a series of leaflets: 1. the expansion of working hours; 2. the intensification of work; 3. The sense and nonsense of work; and this one 4. on workers’ struggles.
You can find all leaflets and more contributions on the website www.motkraft.net/prol-position.
Time for some thoughts and an outlook: when we started writing the leaflets and website in October 2000, we wanted to support a discussion on the working conditions and chances for struggles. Our aim was to instigate the exchange of reports from call centers, to circulate information and to build up contacts to workers and pass those contacts on to others. Some of that has happened.
The leaflets led to some excitement and discussions at work. However, this ebbed away after a few days. We got e-mails asking us to carry on the stuff, but there were not many people sending us their own reports (like the one from an australian call center worker) and few contributions to the actual discussion. Certainly, we are getting information from various people and groups on a regular basis, but no large-scale discussion on the chances for struggles has developed.
In order to get there - also considering the small number of open confrontations in call centers - we need to go beyond this sector. We think that call centers are not isolated, but places of exploitation like other offices, factories, contruction sites and hospitals. In call centers we can learn from the experiences in struggles in other sectors.
We will try to get more interviews and reports from workers who want to do something in their work-place or are taking part in a strike. And wherever necessary we will also intervene in confrontations with leaflets. Stay tuned!
Your hotlines

www.motkraft.net/prol-position
hotlines@motkraft.net


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