All Resources

Gerard Greenfield

Ashley Benigno

Institute of Employment Rights Report links stress and illness to the increasing use of intrusive surveillance in workplaces.

World Socialist Website

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.

World Socialist Website

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

Issue No : 33 December 1999 - February 2000

Yu, Tae Hee

General Situation

Prostitute Women and Client Statistic

Issue No : 33 December 1999 - February 2000

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

Issue No : 33 December 1999 - February 2000

Ana Enriquez

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.

Issue No : 33 December 1999 - February 2000

Yuki Fujime

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.

Issue No : 33 December 1999 - February 2000

Ed Shepherd

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.

Issue No : 33 December 1999 - February 2000

Ah Yim

Issue No : 33 December 1999 - February 2000

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.

Issue No : 33 December 1999 - February 2000

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.

Issue No : 33 December 1999 - February 2000

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.

Issue No : 33 December 1999 - February 2000

Sam Vuthy

Many women and children have been trafficked from rural areas in Cambodia and neighbouring countries to Cambodian cities, especially Phnom Penh, to be prostitutes.

Issue No : 33 December 1999 - February 2000

Phally

Issue No : 33 December 1999 - February 2000

Yukiko Kaname

The biggest challenge to the sex industry in Japan is that it is difficult to identify problems. Due to discriminatory attitudes of national legislation and society against sex work, sex workers cannot obtain information and do not have adequate systems for dealing with problems.

Issue No : 32 September - November 1999

Ed Shepherd

WTO is an acronym that seems to be on everyone's lips, meaning World Trade Organisation. The Swiss headquarters has a permanent staff of over 500. Obviously such a large organisation has many facets. We will try to look at the most important aspects of the WTO to date, the effects it has on labour, and look at what it might like to achieve in the upcoming round of negotiations.