It is estimated that in Europe alone there will soon be 18,900 call centres, up from the current 9,700, with 1.3% of the working population employed as call centre agents. World wide it is estimated that by the year 2002 there will be 8.9 million seats in call centres around the world where the workers are using a mixture of telephone and computer communications generating $7 billion in revenue. The UK has about 3,650 call centres employing 390,000 people. Staff are mainly women aged 20-30.
The following interview is with two workers employed in the technical support call centre of an Australian Internet service provider. AM and JR describe their situations.
Q: What is it like to work in a call centre?
AM: It's intimidating. Customers call in with the same sort of thing. All we do is parrot out solutions, one call after the next. It's monotonous, pretty boring, and uninspiring
Shouchin, Taiwan Association of Licensed Prostitutes (TALP)
Collective of Sex Workers and Supporters (COSWAS), Taiwan
Jean Chou, Pink Collar Solidarity, Taiwan
Taiwanese governmental control over the sex industry (Government policies on the sex industry in Taiwan)
The Criminal Act and The Social Order Protection Law
Latin American sex workers' organising attempts go back to 1982 when the Ecuadorian sex workers formed an organisation. Six years later they went on strike to resist police malpractice and exploitation within the brothels, and to gain attention for their demands for decent working conditions.
In the late eighties, Mexican, Brazilian and Uruguayan prostitutes created their own organisations.
People who disapprove of any further post-war compensation by Japan repeatedly claim that comfort women were licensed prostitutes. What they are saying is that comfort women legally practised prostitution under the state-regulated prostitution system, therefore no official apology or compensation is necessary. How could such a nonsensical argument be accepted by Japanese society? I would like to study what the claim is based on from the historical viewpoint.
The issue of prostitution is generally swept under the carpet. Yet this is a growing business already worth billions of dollars and exists to some degree in all nations.
Sex workers in Hong Kong speak. Following are accounts given by sex workers and a discussion which followed the conference in Zhuhai in January.
Andy
I am a sex worker from Hong Kong. My name is Andy. I want to talk about how I became involved in the business and what my work is. My two colleagues will tell you about what they felt, while I will talk about what I was doing right after I entered the business.
The following information is taken from the Research Report on Mainland Chinese Sex Workers - Hong Kong, Macau and Town B in the Pearl River Delta, available from Zi Teng or Asia Monitor Resource Center.
The sex trade is booming in China, having benefited from the country's effective embrace of capitalism.
My family name is Wang. I am from Changsha in Hunan. I will not tell you my age.
I have five brothers and sisters. I attended school from seven years old until I was 19. Then I wanted to go to university, but my family had no money so I couldn't go.
When I first left home to work, I went to Zhuhai [in China, near Macau], working in a garment factory.
Many women and children have been trafficked from rural areas in Cambodia and neighbouring countries to Cambodian cities, especially Phnom Penh, to be prostitutes.