Working the Phones: Control and Resistance in Call Centres

*Shortlisted for the BBC Radio 4 Thinking Allowed Award for Ethnography 2017*

*Winner of the 2016 Labor History Best Book prize*

Over a million people in the UK work in call centres, and the phrase has become synonymous with low-paid and high stress work, dictatorial supervisors and an enforced dearth of union organisation. However, rarely does the public have access to the true picture of what goes on in these institutions.

For Working the Phones, Jamie Woodcock worked undercover in a ...