Telemarketing: tecnologia e precarização do trabalho

Abstract

This thesis sought to investigate the working conditions in a call center subordinated to a public bank. The telemarketing unit under study is outsourced, and their employees perform the same tasks as direct permanent employees. The telemarketing unit has a high degree of computerization and combines features of Taylorist-Fordist organization with Toyotist management. Labor force use characterized by flexibility and a reduction of labor rights of the outsourced employees compared to the permanent employees of the bank. The hypotheses that guided this research is that technology, far from being neutral, serves the interests of capital as far as it contributes to intensification of labor, increased labor control and, as a result, to the acceleration of capital accumulation. The arguments that science would save human beings from unnecessary physical effort to liberat and develop activities related to the intellect occurred in part, without,however, reduce the degree of exploitation of the employee, revealed by the growing labor insecurity. Questionnaires to the outsourced company workers were used to obtain data aiming to identify the socioeconomic, occupational history, working conditions and the self-perception as working class. We found that the degree of control and intensified labor pace provided by the combination of Fordist management techniques era and control systems based on computer, are increasing labor exploration. In this regard, the technological apparatus can be seen as a dimension of capital.