HATTIESBURG, Miss.—Some 530 call center workers at a big federal contractor, Maximus, who handle calls from Medicare and Affordable Care Act clients, are being forced to strike on November 1 over low pay and Maximus’s refusal to do anything about sexual harassment from callers.
The walkout comes just after the workers, and the Communications Workers who are trying to organize them at call centers in Hattiesburg, Miss.., and Bogalusa, La., filed labor law-breaking—formally called unfair labor practices—complaints against Maximus with the regional office of the National Labor Relations Board.
One issue which prompted the organizing drive at those two centers, and eight others, is low pay, even in two of the poorest states in the U.S. But workers also have reported to supervisors about sexual harassment from callers—and gotten the brush-off.
Many call center employees are workers of color whom venal employers routinely try to exploit. At the same time the call centers can often be best jobs in poor towns. They’re not official federal employees, thanks to past “privatization” edicts Republican regimes imposed on the government.
The workers in Hattiesburg and Bogalusa have timed their forced walkout for maximum impact on Maximus. They handle enrollment for Medicaid and with the Affordable Care Act for the federal Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and “open enrollment” in those two programs—when new clients can join without restrictions—starts November 1.
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