Call centre

A call centre or call center is a centralised office used for the purpose of receiving or transmitting a large volume of requests by telephone. wiki "Call center workers make up about 3 percent of the United States’ workforce, 1-2 percent in Europe, and numbers are rapidly increasing in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. The most popular destinations for outsourced call centers today are India and the Philippines, with 350,000 and 400,000 workers respectively."

"In the United States, there is a marked difference in professional opportunities, wages, and working conditions between unionized and non-union call centres. Workers in non-union centres consistently report that they are poorly paid, subject to arbitrary decisions by managers, monitored unfairly, and do not receive appropriate training. In general, the atmosphere in non-union call centres is unprofessional and exploitive of the average worker."

In the UK, PCS the union has published the "Call centre charter - a framework for workers' rights," "an important development for activists and members and is intended to increase the strength and influence of the union in this sector of the economy."

Leicestershire (UK)

In February 2010 it was reported that: "Leicestershire has previously been dubbed the UK's call centre capital because of the high number of operators in the county attracted by its central location and access to labour. One of the biggest is the British Gas call centre in Grove Park, Enderby, which employs 1,200. Last year, Autoglass announced it was creating 50 jobs by opening a new call centre at Bardon Business Park, near Coalville, in the wake of a surge in demand from motorists wanting their car windows repaired. As reported in today's Leicester Mercury, 55 new call centre workers are being taken on by First Assist, in Hinckley, a firm which runs the Government's Community Legal Advice helpline. Jobs have also been created recently at car dealership Sytner's call centre in Grove Park..."

Criticism

• Robert Masciola, Amy Masciola, and Shelley Sperry, "Answer the Call: Raising wages and professionalism in call centres," UNI Global Union, 2013.
• Aurora Almentral, “Living on call centre time,” The World online, August 12, 2013.
• Andy Hoffman, “Call centres are Philippines new long-distance love affair,” Globe and Mail, April 7, 2012.
• Virginia Doellgast and Lisa Sezer, “Making the right Call: Redesigning call centres from the bottom up," UNI Global Union, 2012.
• Shiv Malik, "Prisoners paid £3 a day to work at call centre that has fired other staff", The Guardian, 8 August 2012. (Becoming Green)
• Vikas Bajaj, “A new capital of call centres,” New York Times, November 25, 2011.
• "Call centres - public services on the cheap", The Socialist, Issue 599, October 28, 2009.
• Tom Good and Joan McFarland, “Call Centres: A New Solution to an Old Problem?” In: James Sacouman and Henry Veltmeyer (eds.), From the Net to the Net: Atlantic Canada and the Global Economy (Aurora, Ontario: Garamond, 2005), pp.99-113.
• Tom Good and Joan McFarland, “Technology, Gender and Regulation: Call Centres in New Brunswick.” In: Jim Stanford and Leah F. Vosko (eds.), Challenging the Market: The Struggle to Regulate Work and Income (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2004), pp. 146-164.
• Dave Moody, "Call Centres and 'Outsourcing': The New Satanic Mills," The Socialist, Issue 341, April 3, 2004.
• Nick Everett, "Call centres: 'the new workhouses'", Green Left Weekly, August 19, 1998.

Critical Books

• Donald L. Bartlett and James B. Steele, Critical Condition: how health care in America became big business - and bad medicine (Broadway Books, 2006).

Examples of Union Activism

• Antoine Lamroschini, “Striking Tunisia staff berate French call centre giant,” Morocco World News, April 3, 2013.
• "Call centre walkout over sweat shop conditions", PCS, January 19, 2011.
• Linda Schuetz, "Workers fight to save 10,000 jobs: Country’s largest call centre company facing bankruptcy", CWI, Bologna (Italy), January 1, 2010. (Phonemedia)

Examples of notable call centre companies

• Aditya Birla Minacs, Affiliated Computer Services, AKR Global Group, Alorica, APAC Customer Services, Convergys, Firstsource, Genpact, Headstrong, InfoCision Management, Inktel Direct, IQor, NCO Group, Sitel, StarTek, Stream Global Services, Sykes Enterprises, Teleperformance, TeleTech, Telus, Transcom WorldWide, VADS