Malika Achour @ Ruskin College on 20th February

Dear Colleague,

I am very pleased to say that Malika Achour has agreed to speak at Ruskin College.

Malika is a trade union activist from Tunisia and long-standing member of the UGTT. The event on 20th Feb will provide colleagues with an opportunity to hear from Malika on, amongst other things, the on-going impact of the Arab Spring on Tunisia, and current position of the country's trade union movement.

Full details of the event are below. Please email me to let me know if you are coming.

In Solidarity

Ian

Working the Phones: Control & Resistance in Call Centres

Dear Colleagues,

Many thanks to Jamie Woodcock for agreeing to visit Ruskin to discuss his new book, Working the Phones.

One review helpfully states:

Crikey, talk about “the classical Marxist notion of alienation”. Which is exactly what Jamie Woodcock does in this grim account of the modern-day “chain worker”, goaded to keep pitching to the terminally ill, the weeping bereaved parent, the trade union official who replies by asking about the cold-caller’s union status and, as both quickly switch to code, wishes him luck. The author, a London School of Economics researcher, knows not only his theory but his subject inside out: he researched it by taking a job in the bleak heart of computerised Taylorism. There’s casualisation, cruelty and regimentation, but also subversion, and Woodcock’s focus on employee resistance offers a flicker of hope.

Other reviews are here, and a YouTube clip of Jamie at a book launch event. I'll try and write a comment on the event at Ruskin with Jamie.

http://www.jamiewoodcock.net/reviews-of-working-the-phones/

In Solidarity

Ian