They work for large companies, in the form of subcontracts, offering services to their clients or attracting new ones. Also for the Administration, collaborating in the income campaign, among other functions. They are the call centers, companies that operate 24 hours a day, doing essential tasks, which cannot be interrupted, and which employ almost 100,000 workers in Spain. This week they were in the news for the tragic death of Inma, a teleoperator who lost her life suddenly in the company’s cubicle, while some colleagues continued to answer calls with the corpse next to them. Workers summarize their day-to-day life with the term stress.
The main problem for the employees consulted is the high workload. “The average number of calls answered is usually 50 a day, but there are campaigns in which the number exceeds 100. This is continuous. We must not leave the cubicle or the computer. And we don’t have time between calls, since the system assigns one after the other”, explains an employee of a large company currently dedicated to the breakdown service of a well-known insurer. He prefers not to say his name.
“Every day it becomes clear how stressful it is to work in a call center, with pressure from superiors for all calls to be quick”, he adds. We must add “the attitude of some customers who get nervous”. Therefore, it is “a job prone to nervousness”, laments this teleoperator. The CEX association, representative of the sector, highlights, in fact, the high “labor absenteeism” in the profession: 12.48%. Those affected call it “pressure” or “stress injuries”.
The workers also complain that it is a “precarious” sector and in which they have just lost purchasing power, laments Diana, who currently works for a large electricity company. The salary increases foreseen in the state agreement, which has just been signed, do not compensate for inflation. In the agreement, a revaluation of payrolls of 3.5% in 2022, 3.5% in 2023 and 3% next year was agreed. Thus, today, a full-time basic teleoperator receives 15,120 gross euros per year. A project manager, for his part, is close to 30,000 euros, and a manager reaches 38,000 euros.
To this situation must be added the temporary nature, which, according to the union’s complaint, continues to be high. It mainly affects women, who are one in three workers. However, according to CEX, the proportion of indefinite contracts experienced a considerable increase in 2022 compared to the previous year, to represent 77% of the total. It was 16 basic points of improvement. However, three out of four are still temporary contracts. For new additions, they regret, the usual contract is the fixed discontinuous one.
These specialized companies invoiced 2,203 million euros last year, with telecommunications, insurance and banking as the main clients.
