A hand went up in a call center booth. The coordinator approached him thinking that the operator needed technical assistance to service a customer of the Iberdrola electricity company. But what the worker, Inma, 57, needed was medical attention because she suffered a heart attack. It collapsed.
It happened around 12:30 p.m. Tuesday at an office east of the capital, one of several in Madrid owned by Spanish multinational call center company Konecta. The staff who work in this room take calls about power outages, a thankless task as they receive shouts, threats and insults from desperate customers. Located on San Romualdo street, in the San Blas district, the enclosure is large and noisy, with about 70 booths. Employee breaks are timed to the minute, and according to several reports, supervisors monitor telemarketers to ensure they don’t slow down. Inma had been in Konecta for a little over fifteen years and the exact causes of her heart attack are not known. The company cannot know whether he was suffering from stress problems, since the medical examinations focus on the physical risks to the spine, hearing or neck, but not on mental health.
The Samur pushed out six vehicles, which arrived between 12:43 and 12:50 p.m., but health workers could do nothing to save Inma, who was pronounced dead half an hour after receiving first aid. The body remained on the ground and was guarded by police while it waited for the judge. The workers in the adjacent stalls had stood up, but the rest didn’t know what to do. Across the room, some telemarketers didn’t even look up. They kept doing their thing. At that point, according to three CGT union officials, a confused colleague asked if he could go home and was told to continue because what they were doing was “an essential service”.
At around 2:00 p.m., the person in charge of occupational risk prevention at Konecta entered the room, coming from the company’s headquarters on Calle Serrano. She ordered that everyone should be evacuated in an orderly manner, but the fact is that at 3:10 p.m., Miguel Ángel Salinas, the CGT officer in charge of occupational risk prevention, arrived at the office and found a scene that startled him. Four workers were still at their workstations in the room, answering calls. “I found the body already covered. I’ve never seen a corpse like this in my life,” says Salinas. He approached a worker who was still standing in front of the screen with her headphones on:
“Partner, are you alright?”
-No no. I’ll finish this and go.
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Two hours and forty minutes had passed since his companion Inma had lost consciousness.
The incident sparked outrage across the networks due to the company’s alleged insensitivity. The first news over the weekend indicated that Konecta officials have issued a general order that everyone can continue their work, but four workers from that call room told EL PAÍS this Monday that what was released, ” a lie” because it suggests that this is cruelty they did not experience.
The facts, according to the reconstruction of this newspaper, show nuances: according to the CGT, the instruction to continue answering calls was only given to some workers individually; there were shocked telemarketers who got up from their posts and felt uncomfortable; Others follow “inertia” and are used to an automated and “dehumanized” work system where the instinctive option is to keep taking calls.
A Konecta spokesman denies that “no one was forced to work next to the corpse”. He adds that the company is focused on caring for loved ones of the deceased “who are suffering from the media frenzy.” “We care a lot about the people who work for us. They are cared for and valued,” the source continues.
Go to the toilet properly
The news of the alleged inhumane treatment of telemarketers workers has received wide coverage as the sector is one where there is a lack of fair treatment, union sources acknowledge. They say that since they hardly have a break (five minutes an hour) mid-conversation they have to put the music on hold to have a glass of water. When they hang up, they have, by agreement, exactly 23 seconds to fill out the file for the customer being served, because that’s the time it takes for a robot to automatically dial the next number. The scale of the dispute is such that just two years ago, the state court recognized that going to the toilet is a right the company cannot deny.
Other union spokesmen, CC OO and UGT, have responded to Inma’s death by focusing on the lack of a protocol governing the response to these events. They met with the company, which assured them that the death would be recognized as an accident at work, with all the associated claims for compensation. Goyi Pérez, CC OO delegate in the Konecta Group, visited the office on Wednesday, a day after the tragedy. He admits that the company provided telecommuting and psychological support to anyone who asked.
What he found in the office does not correspond to a callous scenario in which no one is allowed to leave his post, he says. “Inma’s companions cried and huddled together. She was a dear woman. They have been working together for many years.” Inma’s cabin was still unoccupied. In its place, the companions had set up an altar with photos, flowers, and a message: “Goodbye, Inma.”
Do you have more information? Contact the author at [email protected] or via Twitter to @FernandoPeinado
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