10/28/2008
Sanity in Indiana: Dozens of McCain Robocallers Walk Off Job
"Some three dozen workers at a telemarketing call center in Indiana walked off the job rather than read an incendiary McCain campaign script attacking Barack Obama, according to two workers at the center and one of their parents. Nina Williams, a stay-at-home mom in Lake County, Indiana, tells us that her daughter recently called her from her job at the center, upset that she had been asked to read a script attacking Obama for being 'dangerously weak on crime,' 'coddling criminals,' and for voting against 'protecting children from danger.' Williams' daughter told her that up to 40 of her co-workers had refused to read the script, and had left the call center after supervisors told them that they would have to either read the call or leave, Williams says. The call center is called Americall, and it's located in Hobart, IN."
Dozens Of Call Center Workers Walk Off Job In Protest Rather Than Read McCain Script Attacking Obama [tpm]
Under the Radar [barack obama]
Posted 10:26 AM EST by Andy Towle in Barack Obama, Election 2008, John McCain, News | Permalink
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This old man and the people behind him really need a clue and McBush really needs to find his manhood/backbone and stop this hateful trash. He's going to do one thing, make it harder for the rest of the Repugnat's to win, I guess he does not know the meaniong of "down ticket."
Its sad to see an elderly man so out of control with his own campaign, and, it proves the point he is too old and not at all qualified since he can't even tell when he is doing more harm than good in his own desperate hours of this election. And, does he and the RNC really think there are that many undecided voters???
McBush=Pitiful.
Posted by: Sebastian | Oct 28, 2008 10:35:04 AM
I'm waiting for the "Obama wants to rape our white women" robocall. You know it's coming.
Posted by: John in Manhattan | Oct 28, 2008 10:44:40 AM
Better yet: "Obama wants to take the job of raping our white women away from our white men."
Posted by: David D. | Oct 28, 2008 10:54:42 AM
Having worked around a lot of call centers, I believe one of the problems the Polls are having is the agents. The polls are all over the place and I believe erroneously weighted to Obama. Most of the polling is outsourced to call centers; the majority of call centers are staffed heavily by low wage, young minorities. This election has produced a lot more emotion than others and the agents have more interest than past elections. Given that, as these are outbound calls it is near impossible and mostly illegal to record the calls to analyze. This enables the agents, who think they are helping, to skew the results by throwing out calls they don't agree with. Just my .02.
Posted by: Rocinante | Oct 28, 2008 11:25:43 AM
Since when did telemarketers get a sense of dignity?
Posted by: misquowoti | Oct 28, 2008 11:46:51 AM
While I agree with the telemarketers, I wish that I could walk off the job any time I was asked to do something that I didn't agree with.
That said, I'm surprised that they actually used a call center instead of just having a single recording. For one, it would've been a lot cheaper, and secondly wouldn't have given their campaign the embarrassment of this event.
Yet another bad decision by McCain and the people he entrusts to run his campaign. Yet another reason why he shouldn't be president.
Posted by: AED | Oct 28, 2008 12:31:51 PM
ROCINANTE: I'm not sure what call centers you have worked "around", but I worked IN one when I was in college. I was judged on the number of completed calls I made - meaning that I had to reach someone, get them to agree to be questioned, type in all the responses, and turn in the completed questionnaire. Each one takes a good amount of time, and throwing out responses that they don't agree with doesn't really make sense, since the telemarketer would be jeopardizing his/her own job by throwing away completed work. Also, the call center boss can (and does) listen in at any time on any call (they evaluate your work and give you feedback on how you're doing), so the boss could figure out if specific calls were being tossed.
AED: I'm thinking that maybe they hired the call center to record the robocall...? I don't know why it would be called a robocall if it wasn't pre-recorded.
Posted by: gay as life | Oct 28, 2008 1:24:48 PM
It's my understanding that while the call center was a telemarketing center, the calls were not telemarketing or polling. They were, rather, "robocalls" where a machine (or in this case, a person) calls random people and reads a script. No questions, no responses to "throw out" like Rocinante suggested. Just a script. And a demeaningly hateful one at that.
When it comes to walking off the job anytime one was asked to do something that was disagreeable (AED's comment), we need to remember that in those instances there's always a cost-benefit analysis that goes on. The worker almost always surmises that the cost of leaving the job would be more devastating than the damage caused by performing the unpleasant activity. In this case, the workers rightly determined that they would be better off quitting that job than they would be if they had stayed and participated in spreading blatant lies and further demeaning our electoral process. The Republican Party has always assumed that lower-wage workers valued their meager paychecks more than they valued their integrity. I'm delighted to see them proven wrong by these exemplary Americans.
It's time to put our foot down. We cannot accept this behavior in our elections, no matter which party engages in it. I'm proud of those workers, and hope that there are many more lke them.
Posted by: The Milkman | Oct 28, 2008 1:26:42 PM
True robocalls are illegal in some states but human operated call centers are not. That's why the campaign will hire call centers. Indiana is one state where this is true.
Posted by: what | Oct 28, 2008 1:37:25 PM
AED,
Automated political robocalls are illegal in Indiana. If they want to get their message out via phone, the McCain campaign has no choice but to use live operators.
Posted by: 24play | Oct 28, 2008 1:46:00 PM
Great. McCain is already causing job loss in America BEFORE he gets elected.
Posted by: John Bisceglia | Oct 28, 2008 2:08:19 PM
ROBO calls are illegal in Indiana, that is why the campaign needed to hire people to make the calls. I'm glad to see some fellow Hoosiers standing against this insanity!
Posted by: KFLO | Oct 28, 2008 8:20:25 PM