“By law, you can work six days, one day off and then another six days. They would force us to work overtime every day or ask for Friday, but we accepted. I accepted and did it because I needed the money. The mental exhaustion was total, it was total, but they took advantage of our need to do this. It was only our service because others weren’t willing to do that. The Portuguese and the French lines did not work overtime”. [E5, Woman, 55 years old, Venezuela]
Besides these, there are also situations of disrespect for the human condition and the physiological conditions associated with it.
“Each call has 10 minutes of average handle time, if it was longer than that and if it was a sale, everything would be fine. We have 12 minutes of break in the morning and afternoon, and 1 hour for lunch counted by the second. Every month women have physiological constraints that they cannot control, it is impossible. I saw it happen to colleagues who stayed there and then got up and had dirty pants”. [E13, Man, 43 years old, Brazil]
During the Covid-19 pandemic, most workers were immediately transitioned to the telework regime, while others had to find help in trade unions or had to strike. Instead of liberating, this entire experience constituted a new source of precariousness for workers who found themselves burdened with work costs, increased surveillance and, in some cases, with domestic and care work that became aggravated, especially for women. However, issues related to the transfer of costs from capital to labour still persist, as is the case with the payment of water, electricity, internet bills and the costs associated with work equipment (computer, chair, table), and in some cases the meal allowance was withdrawn. Situations of imposing Orwellian control and surveillance also worsened, through the attempt to install webcams in workers’ homes to possibly control their performance and biometric control applications.
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