In this BPO Corner:
Call Center Labor Union a First in Business
Standard Chartered Bank’s Move Cited
By Rommer M. Balaba

If there is one thing unique that Standard Chartered Bank can boast of to the business community, it is labor and management’s breakthrough to include call center agents in the collective bargaining agreement (CBA).

The inclusion of call center agents as members of organized labor has been unheard of, even in the Mecca of call centers, India, apparently due to the transient nature of their job.

“There was no one who could organize unions among call centers primarily because of the nature of the industry, and secondly because these employees were supposedly at the high-end, meaning snobbish, and thus could not be formed into unions,” Rene Ofreneo, director of the University of the Philippines-School of Labor and Industrial Relations, said in an interview with Business World.

Mr. Ofreneo is undertaking initial studies on the case of Standard Chartered’s call center agents’ membership in the union, and its possible implication on the call center industry.

“It was not that difficult to include call center agents in the bargaining unit because prior to the new CBA, there was a clause that stated that employees that become permanent automatically were covered by the union. Our call center agents usually become regular employees after at least three months, but not more than six months,” Eddie L. Divinagracia, president of the Standard Chartered Employees Union, told Business World.

“They have different terms and conditions of work, which makes it more important for them to be organized.”

The bank management was apparently receptive to the idea since it gave mutual protection and instituted mechanisms to address the call center agents’ work-related concerns and issues, Mr. Divinagracia said.

Bank officials did not give any statement when asked to comment on the issue.

A quarter of the union’s 300 members comprise call center agents, excluding collection agents, who also form the call center services. Standard Chartered started employing them in the mid-1990s. The collection agents comprise another 25 percent, or a combined total half of the union’s membership.

Mr. Ofreneo, an expert on labor and labor-related issues, noted that there have been past attempts to organize call center agents into unions, but all failed.

“The Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) even established a call center academy,” he said. TUCP is the country’s largest umbrella organization of labor federations.

“With their union membership [in the bank], call center agents can get better benefits … and in case they decide to transfer to other call center firms, can ask for competitive salary packages because [of the pay and benefits that] they are getting at Standard Chartered,” Mr. Divinagracia said.

Mr. Ofreneo said Standard Chartered’s example may stem the transient nature of call center agents—at least for the banking system.

“I hope with their inclusion into the union, call center agents would reconsider before transferring to other jobs since being union members offers them some form of protection. They now have a forum to resolve issues like the quota on calls, get psychological support on work-related issues [like being bad-mouthed by clients, receiving crank calls],” he added.

He said this would also remove the notion that it is difficult to organize call center agents into unions, and would address the high turnover rate of call center agents in light of a company’s investment on recruitment and training.

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This article was originally published in Business World. Reprinted with permission.