EP 870 Call Center Operators Face Growing Pressures

 Call centers are the hub of much activity these days as customers seek information or wish to buy things.  Their role has changed over the years and the sophistication of the technology they use, the demands on them to streamline and cost cut with AI, and the supervisor ‘surveillance’ which measures their minute- by- minute activities, make the job more stressful than you might imagine.  And while we, the customer or consumer, are frustrated by the requests to take everything on- line or do a ‘chat’ with an AI bot, the humans at the end of the line have their own concerns. In her book “Disconnected: Call Center Workers Fight for Good Jobs in the Digital Age”, author, labor researcher and organizer Debbie J. Goldman, Ph.D., describes the hard-fought battles of call center workers-one of the largest, yet most overlooked, labor forces in the U.S., even though it is the work home to over 4 million people in the country.

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