UK call centres now employ more people than the coal, steel and car industries combined with a growth in recent years that has exceeded all forecasts. In July 2000, the Financial Times reported that analysts Business Strategies expected employment in UK call centres to rise to 665,000 by 2008. By the first quarter of 2003, a Sector Skills Council survey estimated 867,000 call centre employees, a three-fold increase on 1998 figures.
Many telephone operators are paid less than the minimum wage before commission, in an industry where incidents of racism, abuse and summary dismissal are rife and rarely come before industrial tribunals. In January 2004, a Health and Safety Executive report compared some call centres to Victorian mills, with little trade union representation. Incomes Data Services, in its seventh annual report on the UK call centre industry, claims ‘call centres without a recognised trade union now form a minority of the industry’. But their survey of 300 centres was largely confined to financial services, public sector and not-for-profit organisations with large inbound customer service call centres serving industries already benefiting from union representation.
But in the many small or medium-sized call centres to which large companies outsource their sales or marketing work, high staff turnover and lack of trade union representation leaves workers powerless to challenge often illegal practices and working conditions.
Even call centres serving industries with a strong history of union representation can face difficulty in securing recognition. More than half of the 466 staff at BSkyB’s Livingston call centre signed a petition supporting broadcasting union Bectu. By the time balloting for recognition began, over 100 staff had joined the union. However, after management threatened to move the call centre abroad if Bectu won recognition only 47 employees voted in favour. At the FirstInfo railway call centre in Plymouth, posters advocating union recognition were removed from noticeboards. When management at a large broadcasting call centre such as BSkyB Livingston show such determination to scupper recognition, what hope is there for workers in smaller, less regulated call centres with no union involvement?
The guarantee of evening or weekend work close to home means that many single parents, students and others are economically conscripted into this type of work. Flexible working hours are a perceived benefit of call centre employment. In reality, the picture is varied. At one Plymouth call centre an employee was refused a transfer to the day shift so that he could spend time with his partner and child in the evening on the basis that ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’.
One call centre which does guarantee flexibility is Heathmill in north London, which pays commission only and allows staff to clock in and out at any time of the day or night. Potential staff are lured with the promise of 50% of commissions paid in cash at the end of each day on confirmed sales. Should confirmed sales cancel at a later stage, any commission paid is deducted from the employee’s bank account at the close of the month.
One sales campaign involves calling the United States on behalf of a global pay advance loans company. Pay advance, or ‘pay day’, loans are a multi-billion dollar industry condemned by the Consumer Federation of America as ‘legal loan sharking’. It is legal because you are charged an extortionate fee, rather than an excessive interest rate. The $200 loans sold from Heathmill’s call centre cost an $89 fee on pay day after the first fortnight, a further $89 fee if repayment of the balance is deferred to the end of the next fortnight, and also a $35 ‘membership fee’. So on a $200 loan taken over one month, $213 fees are deducted from the borrower’s wage cheque – equivalent to an annual interest rate of 1278%. Using a casual workforce in a British call centre to sell loans to desperate people in the States shows how global capitalism uses the low paid to fleece the low paid.
Barnaby Probert
FRFI 183 February / March 2005
