Disconnected
Cloth: 08/20/2024
About the Book
Call center employees once blended skill and emotional intelligence to solve customer problems while the workplace itself encouraged camaraderie and job satisfaction. Ten years after telecom industry deregulation, management had isolated the largely female workforce in cubicles, imposed quotas to sell products, and installed surveillance systems that tracked every call and keystroke.Debbie J. Goldman explores how call center employees and their union fought for good, humane jobs in the face of degraded working conditions and lowered wages. As the workforce coalesced to resist the changes, it demanded the Communications Workers of America (CWA) fight for safe and secure good-paying jobs. But trends in technology, capitalism, and corporate governance--combined with the decline of unions--narrowed the negotiating options for workers. Goldman describes how the actions of workers, management, and policymakers shaped the social impact of the new digital technologies and gave new form to the telecommunications industry in a time of momentous change.
Perceptive and nuanced, Disconnected tells an overlooked story of service workers in a time of change.
About the Author
Debbie J. Goldman is the former Research Director and Telecommunications Policy Director with the Communications Workers of America.Reviews
“Last year, customer service reps made their voices heard again in a lively CWA presidential campaign debate about whether they should still have the flexibility to work from home or be herded back into traditional workplaces with less desirable conditions. There’s no better back story to that recent tug-of-war than Disconnected, with its well-researched account of call center work and its continuing discontents.”--Labor Notes"Disconnected vividly documents how call center workers, under intense neoliberal pressure, have carved out space to exercise their collective agency and protect their working conditions. Goldman’s historical analysis of these efforts reminds us that today’s battles for better jobs are deeply intertwined with the victories and defeats of the past. In this sense, the book, which condenses a half-century of call center workers’ struggles, provides valuable insights for today’s workers navigating the ongoing labor for better jobs." — Jeonghun Kim, ILR Review
"Focusing on employees at both the global AT&T and the regional Bell Atlantic system, Goldman offers an innovative historical case study of the deleterious impact of new technology and labor laws on the 'customer sales and service' work force. She shows how the complicated interplay of these technological, economic, financial, and political changes produced more workplace stress for call service workers." — Award Committee, 2025 David Montgomery Award, Organization of American Historians
Blurbs
“Disconnected is one of the most insightful accounts of corporate power, work, and unionism that I have read in years. Goldman’s research is meticulous, her judgments astute, and her prose crystal clear. She tells a story not of triumph but of resourcefulness and grit in an era of relentless corporate deregulation and technological change.”--Gary Gerstle, author of The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era
Awards
• Winner, 2025 David Montgomery AwardRelated Titles
