The employees of a large Madrid company were reportedly forced to continue their mission, despite the death of one of their colleagues on June 13. As the Spanish newspaper reveals Diari of Gironaa 56-year-old woman thus succumbed to a heart attack in the middle of labor and her body remained in the premises of the Konecta company for more than two hours.
A CGT delegate for the prevention of occupational risks explains daily that the fifty-year-old collapsed shortly before 1 p.m. and was declared dead by the emergency services who were unable to resuscitate her. But the body was not taken over by the funeral directors until around 4 p.m. In the meantime, he remained on the ground, next to his colleagues and guarded by police officers.
“We are an essential service”
“The officials should have told the rest of the workers to leave, but they didn’t. There was no order to evacuate,” laments the union delegate. “The service continued normally”, indicates the CGT in a press release, while revealing WhatsApp messages from employees in shock.
Konecta is a telemarketing company that employs teleoperators on behalf of customers. It employs around 12,000 people. The drama of June 13 occurred on the sixth floor of an office building, in the presence of many employees installed on the same platform. “Someone kept repeating: we are an essential service”, confides the delegate who accuses the management of having put pressure on his staff.
Konecta management responds
Some employees would therefore have continued to answer the telephone, for fear of reprisals. Others would have simply chosen to continue their activities, despite a gradual evacuation order given by Konecta’s occupational risk prevention manager at the start of the afternoon. The CGT evokes teleoperators who would have acted by “inertia”, accustomed to automated and “dehumanized” work.
The company’s management, questioned by El País, denies having ordered not to leave the premises. “No one was forced to work next to the corpse,” says the company. She says she takes “great care of the people who work for” her, while specifying that she is currently accompanying the relatives of the deceased.
A controversy during the Covid-19
The death of the 50-year-old will be recognized as a work accident, says Konecta. The management authorized the colleagues of the deceased to have recourse to teleworking and psychological assistance. For their part, the unions are calling for the establishment of an official protocol in the event of an event of this kind.
The call center sector is strongly criticized in Spain for the working conditions of employees. Break times are particularly in the sights of the unions. In 2021, the court had to decide against the company Extel Contact Center and confirm that the break to go to the toilet is indeed a right, recalls El País. For its part, Konecta has already caused controversy in the past, in particular for not having respected the security measures in its offices during the Covid-19 pandemic.