Controle da força de trabalho em call center e suas relações com a saúde dos trabalhadores

Abstract

Amid the socio-historical transformations of the capitalist society, this research aimed to understand and analyze the relationships between work and health of call center workers from a company in the city of Macaé/RJ, highlighting mechanisms and strategies identified in the management and organization of work processes. The justification for the interest in carrying out the study arose from the results of the research during the Social Work graduation which, carried out in an embryonic form, already pointed out to a significant relationship between the illness of call center workers and their working conditions, signaling the intensification of work and time control as contributing factors to exhaustion and illness. However, as preliminary research, it needed to be in-depth. This study is also justified by the interest in deepening the theoretical foundations that reveal changes throughout the history of society, combined with scientific and technological advances driven by the capital interests, which leave their marks in the world of work, introducing innovations and management strategies more complex, investigating ways of controlling the workforce with a view to increasing profits. The expansion of remote work, already developing, driven by the Covid-19 pandemic, accompanies these changes, leading to the widespread and intensive use of technologies. These innovations and strategies for organizing and managing the workforce have adverse impacts on workers’ health, specially in the call center context researched here. The theoretical-bibliographical research, in addition to the recovering of theoretical foundations, included theses, books and periodical publications on the main themes, specially by Marxist authors, to weave reflections, work and social relations of production in capitalism, highlighting them the significant presence of new technologies that facilitate the construction of control strategies, as well as home office work, regarding the particularities of call center work. It was also possible to establish relationships with theoretical-academic formulations on the relationship between work and health, based on foundations from the critical perspective of Occupational Health. Furthermore, this research also carried out fieldwork with data collected through semi-structured interviews with workers, having received a favorable opinion from the Research Ethics Committee (COEP/UERJ). Through critical analysis of the data, it was possible to identify some of the elements related to the workforce control in call centers and their harmful impacts on workers health, highlighting mainly the control: of goals and results, with routines of management and/or inserted into computerized systems; time and productivity, with work intensification; in their relations with the absence or limited autonomy of workers; in interpersonal relationships and expected productive behavior. In their relations with the workers health, physical and mental exhaustion is observed and, sometimes, with recognized and proven illnesses.