One of the worst aspects of the global corporate
culture is that it routinely pits one group of workers against another in
the corporate pursuit of dirt-cheap labor.
This has come to an ugly head in recent years with
the mass offshoring of U.S. call-center jobs. These workers answer
questions that American consumers have about their phone bills, computers,
credit cards, insurance polices, and so on. Curious about a long-distance
charge on your phone bill? Call a company’s toll-free service number,
and you’re likely to reach someone such as Rahail Manzoor in India.
An Indian trade group says 350,000 people there are
working in such back-office service jobs for U.S. corporations, and the
number is expected to grow by 40 percent this year alone. The corporations
are tapping India’s vast pool of workers who are English-speaking,
tech-savvy, and cheap.
But these workers are also nervous wrecks, for they
know that Americans are very angry about the offshoring of middle-class
jobs — and American callers often take out their anger on them, using
creative combinations of four-letter words. The Indian call centers try
deception to deflect this anger. Manzoor, for example, is told to call
himself “Jim” on the phone, and he has undergone lessons in how
to speak “American.” Some call centers have giant TV screens
showing the current weather in U.S. cities, the latest sports scores, and
such so that workers can make small talk and pretend to be in the United
States.
But many callers know better and berate the poor
operators, who are under such stress that they suffer all sorts of
debilitating illnesses. It’s “psychologically
disturbing,” Manzoor says.
It’s also psychologically disturbing for
Americans to see our middle-class future exported while CEOs calmly count
the billions of dollars that they rake in by pitting us against the
Indians.
This article appears in Apr 28 – May 4, 2005.
