June 2001 saw strikes and other industrial action in Spain's telemarketing sector. Trade unions sought the resumption of negotiations over a new national sectoral collective agreement and the introduction of improvements in pay and conditions. The action was well supported by the 40,000 workers in the sector, 90% of whom are employed on temporary contracts.
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June 2001 saw strikes and other industrial action in Spain's telemarketing sector. Trade unions sought the resumption of negotiations over a new national sectoral collective agreement and the introduction of improvements in pay and conditions. The action was well supported by the 40,000 workers in the sector, 90% of whom are employed on temporary contracts.
The Spanish telemarketing sector employs about 40,000 workers, and temporary employment is particularly prevalent: 90% of employment is on "contracts for works and services", with their duration limited by the marketing campaign for which the workers are recruited. Some 75% of the workers are women, generally with a high level of education (70% of the workers in the sector have university degrees). The workers are contracted for promotional campaigns or to provide telemarketing services for third parties.
The Employers' Association of Telephone Marketing (Asociación Empresarial de Márketing Telefónico, AEMT) represents 90% of the sector's companies. Its members had a total turnover of ESP 101,472 million in 2000, which represented an increase of 41% over 1999.
Though it has developed fairly recently, the telemarketing sector has been involved in many labour disputes. As a result of the liberalisation of the telecommunications sector and the total privatisation of Telefónica (ES9901294F), the main strategy of telecommunications companies has been to outsource customer care and services to telemarketing firms. This situation even led the General Confederation of Labour (Confederación General del Trabajo, CGT), a trade union organisation with a large number of elected representatives in the sector, to appeal to the National Court (Audiencia Nacional) against the first interprovincial agreement for the telemarketing sector. This was because it considered that certain articles infringed the Workers' Statute and that the existence of a specific telemarketing agreement, acting as a differentiated regulatory framework, consolidates the great inequalities in employment conditions and pay in the telecommunications sector.
The negotiation of a second agreement came to a standstill in June 2001 over the issue of addressing the precarious situation of the workers in the sector. Mobilisations were called by the Trade Union Confederation of Workers' Commissions (Comisiones Obreras, CC.OO), the General Workers' Confederation (Unión General de Trabajadores, UGT) and CGT, and involved: a demonstration of union delegates in front of the headquarters of the AEMT employers' organisation on 13 June; partial work stoppages of one hour in each shift on 15 June; and a 24-hour strike across the sector and demonstrations in the main cities on 20 June.
According to the organisations calling the strike, the partial stoppages were supported by 70%-80% of the workers, and the 24-hour strike by 90%-95%. The main company in the sector, Atento Telecomunicaciones (a subsidiary of Telefónica), with 15,000 employees, claimed that the strike was supported by 40%-45% of its workforce. During the action, an order by the Ministry of Science and Technology ensured minimum services at Atento for the "1003" telephone information service, because Atento is considered to be the successor of a public company and therefore part of the universal telecommunications service, subject to regulations on the maintenance of minimum services during strikes. This ministerial order, which was not applicable to any other company, was criticised by the trade unions on the grounds that it infringed the right to strike. The unions have presented an appeal calling for the precautionary suspension of the order. Other minimum services guaranteed by the strike organisers focused on emergency and social services.
The aim of the mobilisations was to call for the resumption of the negotiations over the second sectoral agreement for telemarketing, and to call for the inclusion in the agreement of the following points:
introducing rules to make the flexibility required by telemarketing companies compatible with the rights of workers to manage their free time, through a reorganisation of working time (involving the obligatory assignation of individuals to fixed shifts, shorter working hours and limits on irregular working hours);
reducing temporary employment and increasing the number of permanent contracts by at least 30%;
establishing a minimum career structure by including new job categories and levels;
guaranteeing the same pay and employment conditions when the company providing the telemarketing service changes;
creating procedures that avoid massive dismissals without notice, justified by a decrease in business (for example, two days before the strike, 1,000 workers were dismissed at Iberphone); and
increasing pay by 8% per year, backdated from 1 January 2001. Average gross annual wages are currently ESP 1,410,000 for full-time workers, and many part-time workers earn less than ESP 80,000 per month. The unions are also calling for new bonuses and increases in the existing ones.
Eurofound recommends citing this publication in the following way.
Eurofound (2001), Strikes in the telemarketing sector, article.
