On the Line
Within a cubicled and air-conditioned office, a transaction aided by signal transmitters and fiber cables connects Texas and Cubao. Both parties assume their own formulaic roles in the exchange. One lets out a tirade of profanities and the other mutters in retreat; one rants and the other apologizes; one demands and the other delivers.
Jason* has served at the receiving end of this conversation for eight years now, performing at most 50 cases a day. But beneath his pretend American accent and scripted pronouncements, his cries over their inhumane working conditions, low wages, and contract insecurity are being muted.
“It’s not worth it. Your physical strength and intellect are being extracted from you,” said Jason, heaving a sigh as he stared at the high-rise buildings spanning the EDSA skyline. He had just gone out of his graveyard shift, and after a few hours of commuting and attempting to catch up on sleep, he would have to be entrapped once again in these offices he branded as ‘carceral’.
Besides the physical sales he generates from far-flung strangers, Jason knows that something else is being traded away in his transactions. His Waray tongue was the first to go, followed by his hearing faculty, and now, he said, his identity is deteriorating.
Jason and a million others entangled in the Information Technology and Business Process Outsourcing (IT-BPO) embody the direct casualties of an exploitative global exchange. Much as they want to flee from this limbo, the need to provide for their everyday living impels them to stay within.
“This job is not for us," Jason said. "The service we provide does not mean anything to us at all.”
Heavy Duty ------
Inside a call center, time is obscured into seemingly endless hours. With curtains drawn and clocks reconfigured to different time zones, night and day are indistinguishable. Sanity breaks are forbidden. Every minute wasted away from a call translates to deduction from the workers’ monthly wage.
Call center agents are expected to reach a quota of 40 to 50 cases every day, with each call lasting for about 8 minutes.
They have borne this intense pressure, physically and mentally. The likelihood of chronic burnout, enforced insomnia, caffeine-induced acidity, and pneumonia developed from chain-smoking, was apparently concealed from the packaged offer they acquired upon recruitment.
Rest seems a luxury they cannot afford. Any moment they tune out of the grind, two points are deducted from their track record as per the company’s protocol against negligence of work.
Aileen*, a call center agent of three years, has not seen her eight-year old son for months now. With the management’s newly implemented policy that allows only one leave for a group of ten agents, her chances of seeing him have diminished.
“Isang beses ka um-absent, final warning agad. [Sunod-sunod] na late every week tapos [i-su-suspend] ka ng limang araw. Siyempre, pag suspended walang sahod,” said Aileen. “‘E diba may pamilya ka, paano iyon?” said Aileen.
On top of these stringent conditions are schemes to rev up competition among the agents, such as unrealistic sales targets, intending to individualize them and maximize the company’s profit.
“Yung iba, [binabantayan] ‘yung threat sa posisyon niya. Ang labanan sa’min ay hindi maipasa yung quota ng 100 cases a day. Ang labanan ay malampasan ang perfect score of 120,” Aileen said.
In the absence of a group that can startle the higher-ups with the prospect of dissent, what remains, as expected, are repressive workplace policies draped as administrative prerogatives, to be accepted along with all the other terms and conditions.
Out of Service -------
With no signs of decelerating, the rate at which Filipino workers opt for call center jobs continues to spur, luring in high school graduates and degree holders alike. Within a decade of its onset in 2000, the Philippines has become “the call center capital of the world," amassing about 17 percent of the total outsourced services globally by 2016.
This sector drives a significant chunk of the economy, increasing the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) by a huge margin, and effectively overtaking remittances from overseas workers as the top earner for foreign exchange.
But its prosperity seems a distant reality from its key drivers. The very trajectory of this so-called economic pillar is founded on and propelled by the continual estrangement of these call center agents.
“Workers are considered an expense. The only way [these companies] can maximize profit, which is its very essence, is through its workers,” said Mylene Cabosas, president of the BPO Industry Employee Network (BIEN) “Because materials are fixed costs, and the only variable is labor cost, the call center agents are victimized.”
Besides their reversed circadian rhythms and lingual modification, the identities of call center workers are also rendered malleable to foreign corporations' profiteering demands. More often than not, these are accepted with little to no opposition, aware as the agents are of dim prospects elsewhere.
Their subordination is more likely to be entertained, not by force, but through implicit micro negotiations. Their local identities are retained, but it is continually molded by their knowledge of the greater economic value of a global personality.
Precisely in this process, where the West actively yet subtly holds control over the cultural identities of Filipino workers, the illusions of a decentralized power in a supposedly free global market are debunked.
At the core of a global community are largely imbalanced power relations, with foreign businesses wielding the upper hand in the exchange. Far from developing dwarf economies, they seek primarily to assert authority over the latter’s productive systems.
Just as how Jason and Aileen have to live and breathe the cultural contexts of their clientele — to change their names to a Western sounding ones, adopt a Texan twang, restructure their daily schedule, and learn an entirely new set of foreign instructions — the Filipino is molded anew to tailor-fit transnational needs.
“Kahit noong training, [tinuturuan] kami na hayaan mo [sila] dahil hindi ka naman kilala niyan, pero hindi mo maiiwasan na dibdibin, na mainis. Yinuyurakan ka na Pilipino ka,” Jason said. “Pero hindi ka pwede sumagot — naka-mute ka lang.”
