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FLUX AND FLOWS OF PEOPLE, POWER AND PRACTICES: ISSUES RELATING TO SOCIAL JUSTICE197trained to meet client needs”. “Sandy”, a 23-year-oldFilipino customer service representative for anAustralian account said, “In my company, they onlyask me to speak as clearly as possible”.For American accounts, workers are taught Americanaccents, grammar, idioms, jargon, and Americangeography and popular culture. They are discouragedto reveal their geographical location in calls, or toreveal their real identity. They are asked to usecommon American names, such as Eric, Joseph, orJenny. The workers have various perspectives on thispractice. Some workers, especially beginners, feeluncomfortable as they feel they are telling lies tocustomers. But other workers find the training helpsthem to feel more confident and assertive.The practical reason underlying the above approach isto improve service to customers. However, another,rarely discussed reason may be to “mute the politicalbacklash in the West over the morality of outsourcing”(Nadeem 2011, 7). Some companies have now startedto allow agents to disclose their location and their realidentity as Filipinos (see also Hechanova-Alampay2010).In offshore call centers, English is seen as a keyinstrument to overcome national barriers (Phillipson2001 cited from Mirchandani 2004). However, thereis a critique that says that training programs conductedby call centers are an example of engagement in“language trafficking,” which is understood as thespread of a particular type of English throughout theworld (Swales 1997 cited from Mirchandani 2004).Another critical aspect of service work has beentermed “emotional labor”. According to Leidner(1999, 83), “interactive service workers must expendemotional labor to produce a certain quality ofinteraction but also to manage the emotions of servicerecipients so that they do not hang up”. Although thecall center agents do not interact face to face with thecustomer, they are still asked to smile and to controltheir mood. Trainees are taught that customers can“see” their smile and sense their mood through theirvoice (see Townsend 2007).Training approaches vary widely between largecompanies and small or “fly by night” call centers.Training approaches are also largely determined by thetype of account they are designed for. Major accountsusually choose to work with large call centers, whichare seen as being able to deliver a better service due tobeing relatively more reliable in terms of infrastructureand technology and human resources (well-trainedworkers, skillful trainers, and good quality controlstaff). Large companies invest heavily in training. A callcenter worker who had worked in call centers ofvarious sizes said,“In the smaller companies we didn’t have actualformal training. On the first day of work we werealready put on the phone, reading a particularscript without knowing what the actual productwas. We just needed to follow the script. In thelarger companies, they are going to train you.They wouldn’t start any agent without productknowledge. Prior to that, they train you inAmerican geography, language and culture. Ifyou pass, they send you to product knowledgetraining. After that, in one or two days’ time,they will put you on the floor and let you try totake calls. Then you go back to training class.Once you have completed the training you startto take calls. We do get additional training aswell. They try to develop people. They have thisparticular plan; we should be able to get to aparticular position in a particular time frame. It’sin their handbook. If we’re good we can apply fora higher position”.A senior training and development manager in aleading American company said,“We encourage growth and employmentdevelopment. When you join us you will see howyou will progress in terms of career. You will seea ladder to show you where you will be in sixmonths, in one year, in two years, so on and soforth. In some call centers, especially the bigones, they try to do that. They are shifting theimage of call centers because they realize that inorder for an operation to get to operationalexcellence you have to keep your people. Theyhave to be trained internally. If you keep gettingfresh people you will not reach that operationalexcellence because there’s always a learning curvewhen you hire new people”.Those explanations suggest that call center jobs cannotbe seen simply as either dead-end or promising jobs.Although there is a chance for career movement, fewpeople actually get promoted due to the limitednumber of higher positions. Competition amongworkers is very high and may lead to an unhealthyworking environment.The Work of the 2010/2011 API Fellows