At the end of October 2005, the global union, Union Network International (UNI), held its first ever conference dedicated to call centres. The conference provided the platform for the presentation of interim findings from a global survey of the call centre industry, based at Cornell University, USA, which has research teams in 20 countries. It found that although roughly 80% of call centre work is still being carried out within national boundaries and three-quarters of call centre work is done in-house, the incidence of outsourcing and offshoring is growing rapidly. The study highlights the cost savings for employers who offshore their call centres: workers in an Indian call centre are typically paid USD 2,400 a year, compared with USD 28,000 in the USA and nearly USD 42,000 in Denmark.
As unions are being urged to increase cooperation at national and international level to organise workers in the fast-growing call centre industry, the first ever global conference dedicated to call centres was held in Athens in October 2005. Interim results from a global survey of the industry were presented at the conference.
At the end of October 2005, the global union, Union Network International (UNI), held its first ever conference dedicated to call centres. The conference provided the platform for the presentation of interim findings from a global survey of the call centre industry, based at Cornell University, USA, which has research teams in 20 countries. It found that although roughly 80% of call centre work is still being carried out within national boundaries and three-quarters of call centre work is done in-house, the incidence of outsourcing and offshoring is growing rapidly. The study highlights the cost savings for employers who offshore their call centres: workers in an Indian call centre are typically paid USD 2,400 a year, compared with USD 28,000 in the USA and nearly USD 42,000 in Denmark.
Delegates heard that working conditions in call centres are often poor and Dimitra Makri, the president of the Union of Cosmote Employees (Cosmote is Greece’s leading mobile operator), highlighted the existence of stress and a regime of long and unregulated hours, low pay, high call volumes, monitoring targets, poor career prospects, difficult customers and a loss of identity. The Cornell study found that the average call centre employee is a young woman and that stress, anxiety, burn-out and depression all add to low morale, raising staff turnover and absenteeism: at the worst companies, staff turnover amounts to at least 28% a year in India, 25% in the USA and 23% in the UK.
UNI’s Neil Anderson stressed how important it is to try to ensure that wherever work is outsourced or offshored, it is unionised, and how important it is for unions to coordinate their activities. He said: 'Wherever the work goes, we want this work to be unionised', stressing that customer service professionals should be able to operate in a decent working environment: 'We want decent work for all to avoid a race to the bottom'. The Cornell study found that the level of unionisation varies, with unions present in around half the call centres in, for example, Denmark, France and the UK, but in only 10% in the USA and none in India.
Mr Anderson also underlined how important it is for the interests of all concerned that good management of call centres takes place: 'It’s not just in the interests of workers, but also companies and consumers that good management of call centres takes place'. Cornell’s Professor Rose Batt noted that if things go wrong, both staff and customers suffer: 'A lousy service means a lousy job'.
UNI’s general secretary Philip Jennings and his colleague, Neil Anderson, highlighted the value of global agreements with the major multinationals that enshrine core labour rights and open the door to union organising wherever those companies operate around the world. Mr Jennings said: 'UNI has seven global agreements so far, is about to sign several more and I hope we will have signed up 50 global corporations by the time we hold our next congress in Nagasaki, Japan, in 2010'.
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Eurofound (2005), UNI holds first ever conference on call centres, article.
