In this video, author Jamie Woodcock talks about about his experience of working undercover in a call centre, and the insights he brought to his new book Working the Phones: Control and Resistance in Call Centres.
In the book 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.