You have to imagine that the quality of service people are providing isn't that high either if they're miserable. I think about peoples' quality of life in a call center whenever I'm stuck on hold with Verizon or some other faceless corporation.

People pretty regularly just told customers whatever they wanted to hear to get them off the phone. The more scrupulous among us wouldn't say anything false or break any rules but would deliberately upset customers to get them to ask for a supervisor (call length was a major metric which affected your pay substantially, so if you couldn't really do anything for them this was the best strategy).

"when a measure becomes a target" and all that.

> because it was hard to unionize a workplace where people didn't stick around for a whole year on average.

That's why you want inter-professional union.

How would that end up working? I think few people think of themselves as "call center professionals" because they end up in some other job, but maybe I'm misunderstanding your suggestion.

Typically every professions from every sectors (employees, medical, farmer, etc.) end up into a given category (social workers, railroad workers, etc.). Unions then use the memberships of all the employees across different companies and sectors as a leverage to negotiate better working conditions or retirement on behalf of their affiliates. So when/if is a strike is called for for a particular problem at company X or in sector Y they get the full force of every affiliates behind the union (edit: they can also dispatch strikers from company X at company Y location so workers from company Y aren't directly threatened or put into uncomfortable situations for instance, and massive street demonstration can rally many workers from many different companies/sectors).

Of course that system has been built over decades and the way it operates and negotiations are handled can vastly differ between neighboring countries (think France which is more confrontational at first and Germany where unions are more integrated into the process) (plus, unions have different political outlooks, so it's not one size fits all).

In countries with a strong social net unions use their affiliate's entrance fees to guarantee they are paid for striked days. Also some countries have laws that forbid employers to punish strikers (granted they announce in time they are going on a strike). Some sectors (medical, police, etc.) have some restrictions on that "right to strike".

That's just a really short resume, though and I don't know if such a thing could be possible in the USA.

it makes sense, because unionisation will decrease the company's competitiveness, leading to their clients shifting to another (non-unionised) call centre and everyone getting fired. Thus companies in sectors like this end up trying to squeeze every drop out of their employees before they quit, because they are expendable.

We were directly employed by the company for whom we were providing service rather than being a third-party call center.

even in that case, companies are aware of the cost-increasing effect of unionisation so the action is the same, but via direct company action rather than market attrition.