call centres
Articles about work, policy and workers' struggles in the service sector, as distinct from retail, energy and communications.
Auckland call centre workers stand strong against lock out and nuclear ship visits
50 Unite Union members at the OCIS call centre in Auckland, New Zealand stood strong on Friday night after their employer locked them out. The lock out came after three weeks of wildcat strike action by workers.
Small groups of, nearly all teenaged, interviewers and supervisors had been regularly walking off shift, especially during unpopular weekend shifts. Scuffles broke out and the police turned up Friday night as officials and members attempted to rush the door to the call centre.
Ladbrokes staff strike against pay offer
Staff at a Ladbrokes betting call centre on Merseyside are staging a 24-hour walkout in a row over pay.
The union Usdaw said hundreds of workers at the site in Aintree were set to strike from 0500 BST on Sunday. It said staff were unhappy after being offered what it said was a below-inflation pay rise of 3%.
Working life, interviews and leaflets in Delhi's call centre cluster, 2006
Detailed report written after three months of work as foreign call centre worker in Delhi and collective political intervention in the area.
The text looks at the composition of foreign workers in Indian call centres and documents interviews with workers from international companies such as HP or Citibank which relocated call centre work to the industrial outskirts of Delhi.
Introduction
Fiat - call centre report from Milano, Italy, 2002
Report from October 2002 about work, resistance and the possibilities for struggle in a Milan call centre.
At the beginning everything looks really nice when you enter Fiat's call centre in Milan. Lots of space, multi-coloured cubicle walls and little flags, lots of young people sitting in front of large monitors, wandering around or relaxing and smoking in the corner by the vending machines. They speak all kinds of languages: Italian, French, German, Spanish, Dutch, Polish...
Call centre report from Athens, Greece, 2002
A short account from November 2002 of working in a commission-based telesales call centre in Athens, Greece.
Teleprime is a call centre company which sells mobile phones and, more importantly, issues credit cards. It has many branches all over Athens (at least).
What now Norwich? Norwich Union job cuts
Comment on the latest case of call centre jobs "transferred" to India, and the trades union response to it, from Norwich Class War.
The news that fresh forced redundancies at Norwich Union by Aviva can only have come with shocked resignation to many people in Norwich this morning, as they gained the knowledge via the media that the present culture of ‘offshoring’ jobs to India continues to wreak havoc on Norwich’s work force and call centre staff across the country.
London: Hospital porters and cleaners on strike
Porters, cleaners and switchboard staff employed by Rentokil Initial, based at Whipps Cross Hospital in East London, have been on strike since 21st July.
An agreement over pay and conditions was made in 2003, due to come into force in April 2006, several other East London hospitals agreed to the deal, only Rentokil at Whipps Cross has failed to honour it. The pay award is roughly equivalent to a £2 per hour raise, for staff who in some cases earn as little as £5.52 per hour, the agreement also included increases in leave entitlement.
More NHS job cuts
Another 1,000 jobs are to be axed in the health service, this time from the relatively new NHS Direct, bringing the total job losses across the sector to 13,000 over the past few months.
Citing a £15m deficit, health bosses intend to shut centres at Doncaster, Scunthorpe, York, Chester, Bolton, Preston, Chorley, Southport, Cambridge, Croydon, Brighton and Kensington over the next 18 months.
5,000 jobs to go at NTL
Cable company NTL will tomorrow announce a jobs cull, axing almost a third of its British workforce as it pushes for £250m in annual cost savings from its £3.4bn merger with rival Telewest.
Around 5,000 jobs are expected to go from the combined company's workforce of 17,000 over the next few years.
Interview with an ex-sex text worker
In the wake of the first unfair dismissal case for a sex worker, libcom.org interviews another sex worker about the industry, the work, and the possibilities for struggle
Last week, GMB member Irene Everett won the first ever unfair dismissal case for a sex worker, against Essex-based Datapro Service Limited. She had worked on their live adult chat lines for eight years. The GMB, following its merger with the International Union of Sex Workers in 2002, has been trying to organise in the UK, and this was their first victory.
