Abstract

*Shortlisted for the BBC Radio 4 Thinking Allowed Award for Ethnography 2017*

*Winner of the 2016 Labor History Best Book prize*

Over a million people in the UK work in call centres, and the phrase has become synonymous with low-paid and high stress work, dictatorial supervisors and an enforced dearth of union organisation. However, rarely does the public have access to the true picture of what goes on in these institutions.

For Working the Phones, Jamie Woodcock worked undercover in a call centre to gather insights into the everyday experiences of call centre workers. He shows how this work has become emblematic of the shift towards a post-industrial service economy, and all the issues that this produces, such as the destruction of a unionised work force, isolation and alienation, loss of agency and, ominously, the proliferation of surveillance and control which affects mental and physical well being of the workers.

By applying a sophisticated, radical analysis to a thoroughly international 21st century phenomenon, Working the Phones presents a window onto the methods of resistance that are developing on our office floors, and considers whether there is any hope left for the modern worker today.

'An important contribution to the sociology and anthropology of work—especially in its laudable effort to understand the conditions of call centers, which might be the most paradigmatic job among the world’s growing ranks of precarious workers'
Anthropology of Work Review
'In this urgent and incisive study, Woodcock identifies the imposing challenges to organising against exploitation in conditions of atomised precarity, while also giving us precious glimpses of what a counter-offensive against capital might look like. A masterful lesson in how sociology can serve both to interpret and change a world of labour under the pall of austerity'
Alberto Toscano, Reader in Critical Theory, Department of Sociology, Goldsmiths, University of London
'Jamie Woodcock shows us what call centres can tell us about bleakness and resistance in the modern workplace'
VICE
'A theoretically sophisticated and empiracally rich account of what it is like to work in a call centre'
Red Pepper
'A sharp reminder of the difficulties faced by call-centre workers'
Financial Times
'Woodcock knows not only his theory but his subject inside out. There's casualisation, cruelty and regimentation, but also subversion, and his focus on employee resistance offers a flicker of hope'
Times Higher Education
'Invaluable'
Marx & Philosophy Review of Books
'Jamie Woodcock's brilliant insider account of life in a British call-centre reveals the dirty realities of digital capitalism ... a book that is sure to become a classic'
Peter Fleming, author of The Mythology of Work (Pluto, 2015)
'Everyone should read Jamie Woodcock's book'
Manchester Review of Books
'Written in an accessible style, this in-depth study of workplace resistance is highly recommended'
Work, Employment and Society