Call centre staff stand up to TeleTech

Call centre staff at TeleTech International in Sydney and Moe, 
Victoria decided to stop work last Monday to express their 
frustration at TeleTech's refusal to negotiate a new employment 
agreement. The US-based TeleTech, one of the largest call centre 
corporations in the world, is notorious for its treatment of 
staff.

Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) members at TeleTech's 
Moe site and United Services Union (USU) members at the Pennant 
Hills site, Sydney decided to take joint action.

"Staff have refused to accept sub-standard individual contracts, 
otherwise known as AWAs", explained CPSU Organiser Hayden Jones, 
"so TeleTech has decided to punish them by leaving them on 
expired agreements and refusing to negotiate."

The original contracts that have expired sliced thousands of 
dollars off rates that had been negotiated with Telstra. The 
company forced on staff on a take-it or leave-it basis.

This time round staff are demanding the right to a collective 
agreement. "We're talking about the biggest contract call centre 
in Australia, mainly doing out-sourced work for Telstra, yet they 
are treating their employees with contempt", said Mr Jones.

Telstra has sacked workers and contracted work out to companies 
such as TeleTech, its own Stellar joint venture and IBM (see 
below). This has provided them with a backdoor means to 
undermining award wages and conditions.

"TeleTech are being completely unreasonable", he said. "When it 
became clear that our members weren't going to accept individual 
contracts, TeleTech wrote to them with an ultimatum of 'take it 
or leave it'. The proposed contracts were withdrawn just prior to 
Christmas and TeleTech have done nothing since to address the 
situation."

CPSU Organiser Sue Brookes described the conditions in the new 
AWAs as worse than in the original ones.

USU Executive President Michael Want said, "It is ridiculous that 
a company can refuse to negotiate just because staff want a 
collective agreement. John Howard's legislation is stacked 
against low paid workers, they get no choice, no rights. These 
people are some of the lowest paid in Australia yet their jobs 
require significant skill and expose them to enormous pressure."

This is not the first time TeleTech staff have had to resort to 
industrial action. Moe staff took industrial action in 2002 
regarding pay problems and last December they stopped work to 
demand the resumption of agreement negotiations.

One workers was sent home after he attended a CPSU stop-work 
meeting, and docked for being off-site, but not until he had been 
on the job for two hours and 46 minutes and helped the centre 
overcome its morning peak.

TeleTech has also docked call centre staff, unseen by the public, 
for wearing collarless shirts.

"Many of the conditions at TeleTech are below industry standards 
contained in the Contract Call Centre Award, which TeleTech is 
also resisting", said Mr Want.

Although the new award provides only minimal safeguards, it would 
oblige TeleTech to pay loadings for Saturday and Sunday hours, 
which the old AWAs do not require.

Issues that staff want addressed in an agreement and/or the Award 
include:

* Decent pay increases well above CPI rates

* Penalty rates

* Duty to consult with employees about rostering 
preferences/changes

* Reference to their union/any representative in the Dispute 
Resolution Procedure.