Features
| RAISING THE STANDARD
As a result of a recent survey highlighting working conditions for call centre staff in Scotland, UNISON Scotland launched a charter for call centres. Called Raising the Standard, it aims to ensure that members know their rights, as well as ensuring that employers treat call centre staff properly. Raising standards requires a partnership between employers, their staff and their trade unions. The six key principles in the charter are: Pay
Fairness at work
Job design
Trade unions
Training and development
Health and safety
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Next time you phone a call centre, your 'customer service adviser' could be talking to you from India. Helen Taylor looks at how companies are increasingly farming out their operations abroad, all in the name of cost cutting
At the end of the line
The chief executive of HSBC bank, Sir Keith Whitson, caused uproar recently when he said he would rather use call centre workers in India than those in Britain.
He claimed that workers in Asia are smartly dressed, enthusiastic, more efficient and are often graduates.
Of course, he may also have been persuaded by the fact that wages in India are about £4 a day which is more like the hourly rate over here.
The bank already has 3,100 call centre staff in Asia answering calls from British customers, and it expects to increase that to 4,500 by the end of the year. With wages so low, the additional cost of re-directing phone calls to India is easily met.
And HSBC isn’t the only company to be looking East. British Airways, Zurich Insurance, GE and others have all sent their call centre services overseas.
UNISON is concerned by Thames Water’s recent decision to export its call centre services, probably to India, in an attempt to reduce its overall costs.
The company plans to cut 150 jobs initially, adding that a possible 1,000 staff could be affected in some way in the future.
“The proposal to transfer these jobs out of the UK is very worrying indeed,” said UNISON regional officer, Ron Harley. “This is a slap in the face for our members who have worked tirelessly to improve services to customers over many years.”
Reality, a part of the GUS retail chain, also came into conflict with British staff over plans to move some of its operations to India.
More than 80% of 
USDAW members at the company voted in September for strike action, after saying they’d been betrayed by the company’s secret deal with India.
But in spite of job losses in the industry, with BT alone axing more than two thousand posts earlier this year, call centres remain a major employer in Britain. One job in 50 in Britain is currently in a call centre, which is expected to rise to one in 30 in the next five or six years. And that is in spite of serious concerns about working conditions in the industry, with complaints about stress, bullying and unreasonable workloads.
In India, however, call centre work is seen as highly desirable. With school teachers earning just £50 a month, call centre wages of double that are seen as attractive. This means that the industry attracts the young, well-educated, middle classes who are eager to work in a clean and modern environment.
A recent BBC Radio 4 programme, India Calling, How May I Help?, described the great lengths that would-be employees in India have to go to in order to work in a British call centre.
Many pay a massive £200 for a three-week training course on the finer points of British culture, such as which Spice Girl married David Beckham and the plot of East Enders. They are also taught how to ‘neutralise’ their accents to suit a British audience and some adopt English names.
Callers from Dundee to Dover need never know that the young woman on the other end of the line is in Delhi not Durham. Nor do they need to know that the goods or services they are buying are beyond the wildest dreams of the cheery telephone operator.
Workers quoted in the Radio 4 programme talked of how it felt to handle customers spending £50 on a t-shirt the equivalent of two weeks wages for those taking the calls. Yet they were also well aware that the only reason the jobs had come to India in the first place was because they earned a tenth of the wages their British counterparts could command.
It is estimated that 100,000 people work in the call centre industry in India and some think that could grow tenfold over the coming years. And, in spite of job cuts, the size of the industry in Britain is also growing.
Workers around the world are becoming more and more likely to spend their working day in a call centre. Their experiences may differ, depending on the conditions in their workplace and the society in which they live, but their lives are no longer worlds apart.
The jobs of staff in Britain need to be defended and working conditions improved. But workers in India, too, should be protected from exploitation as a result of the demands of an increasingly globalised market, which is motivated by profit.
Wherever it is located, call centre work is potentially stressful and monotonous and call centre staff need adequate remuneration and respect in recognition of this fact.
Contact the article's author Helen Taylor
| UNISON AND CALL CENTRES
“UNISON is adamant that employees in call centres are treated properly and fairly and not just seen as an extension of technology,” said general secretary Dave Prentis in a recent union report on the industry. “They are human beings who have a pivotal role in making the system work they are the frontline contact between customer, client and community.” The report Holding the Line UNISON’s Guide to Making Call Centres a Better Place to Work is a detailed overview of pay, training, health and safety and fairness at work for call centre staff. It takes a close look at the industries in which UNISON and other unions are organising call centre workers. They are: local government, NHS Direct, the police service, the ambulance service, transport, education, housing associations, and gas, water and other utilities. Holding the Line is available at a cost of £5 to members and £15 to non-members. For a copy, fax your order to 020 7551 1461 or A stressful job
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