Got Your Number

Jobs With Justice, together with the CWA and several Indian labor groups, have issued a report on the working conditions in outsourced call centers in both India and the US.

In the US:

In terms of working conditions of US workers, it reveals that
• Subcontractors are under intense pressure to maintain low costs and meet certain
efficiency goals.
• Electronic monitoring of employees at work is a common feature
• Call handling time varies between nine minutes in call centres serving large business or
providing IT services to 4.7 minutes for retail and financial services centres.
• The number of customers per employee per day ranges from 56 in IT service centres and
66 in business centres to 83 in outsourced centres and 99 in retail centres.
• Call centre employees work 40 hours per week on an average, with a range of 35 hours
per week in retail and outsourced centres and over 40 hours in large business and IT
service centres.

In India:

• Workers have to meet daily targets and maintain a consistently good performance, as the
salary package is linked to performance. To meet these daily targets, workers have to
work overtime Compulsory night shifts for men and women, and long working hours
make the workers more vulnerable to psychological and health risks related to work.
• Abusive callers and irate customers significantly add to the stress of a call centre worker.
• The atypical working hours and adoption of ‘western names’ and etiquettes throws the
workers into cultural confusion.
• More than 20% of the workers have severe health problems and behavioural disorders.

Among the reccomendations:

3) Customer service workers need a voice on the job. That’s the only way workers will be a
part of the workplace and be able to have a real investment in providing quality customer
service. Union representation can be an asset to companies as well, but far too many US
employers seek to block workers who want a union voice. For the US, this will require
real changes in labour law and employer behaviour to enable workers’ to make a fair
choice about union representation.

Customer service employees’ organizations in the US need to join hands with all working
people in ensuring labour law reform.

4) Customer service workers around the globe must work together and support each
others’ concerns, and not allow multi-national companies to pit us against each other.
CWA works closely with UNI unions and other worker organizations to build support for
the work of customer service and sales workers and to stop companies from pitting
workers against each other in a race to the bottom.

Organizing customer service employees in the Global South, where multinationals
subcontract their functions, is a priority and unions in the Global North must play a pro-
active role in working with organizations that are focused on organizing such workers.
Only through the formation of worker organizations, can genuine collaboration begin to
fight the global force of multinationals and subcontracting.

5) Call centre workers – no matter where they work – must recognize we are fighting
against a common problem: employers who are chasing the lowest possible costs no
matter what the expense to the customer service worker.

Development of international educational materials, tailored to local conditions, and
communication between customer service workers across the globe are essential for
debunking the myths that divide workers and help the multinationals.

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