March 5, 2026

Labour Relations, Social Inequalities and Trade Unionism

Elísio Estanque

The Digital Revolution and the Fourth Industrial Revolution pose new challenges for the world of work, including social, economic, and technological dimensions, particularly in terms of the acquisition, sharing, and distribution of knowledge. The introduction of digital technologies and Artificial Intelligence has been accompanied by an increase in atypical forms of precarious, informal, and unprotected work. Flexibility, mobility, an unstable labor market, outsourcing, the intensification of working hours, the aging and feminization of labor, and a high level of emotional demands are becoming a pandemic, calling into question decent working conditions.

The commodification of labor and skills leads to processes of deskilling and reskilling, where most individuals are unable to apply their academic or more general skills. This scenario hinders the construction of occupational identities, leading to a frustration of status. On the one hand, work is deeply connected to the subjective dimension of human beings, through the consequences of instability and unpredictable risks inherent in precariousness; and, on the other, it deals with the objective dimension related to occupational identity, which comprises an important dimension of social identity. According to Marxist theory, there is a general tendency to reduce workers to an undifferentiated mass, easily replaceable by the precarious reserve army. Workers have become alienated not only from their social labor rights, but also from their human rights, that is, from themselves, leading to serious physical and mental health conditions, creating a precarious psyche.

Call and contact centers represent the new service proletariat that exemplifies many aspects of technological innovation and is one of the fastest-developing forms of digital and platformized work. Operators are subject to high levels of labor flexibility and psychosocial risks that were exacerbated during the Covid-19 pandemic, especially with the difficult transition to remote work. In the contemporary paradigm of capitalist production, it is vital to critically consider the relationship between labor, automation, and the effects of new technologies.

This thesis comprised 70 in-depth interviews with operators, unionists, and activists, working in the call and contact center world in Portugal, as well as netnography, documentary research, and non-participant observation. A case study was also conducted in the United Kingdom, as part of a short mission, where 15 interviewees, operators and trade unionists, discussed their occupational trajectory, allowing for a complementary point of view and/or analysis to be obtained on the Portuguese case. In a digital economy, the aim is to analyze the career trajectories of call and contact center workers to understand who these workers are and how they organize themselves for social and union mobilization, reviving the concept of class consciousness.

Keywords: Call and Contact Centers; Digital and Platform Work; Life Trajectories; Precariousness; Unionism.