Strategy for Union Re-entry at the WA Bank Call-Centre - Case Study Example

Strategy for Union Re-entry at the Call-Centre Name: Course: Tutor: Date: Literature Review Despite Call Centres being rated among the fastest growing business enterprises in the service sector, there is a wide agreement among scholars that the strict working hour, little-or-no flexibility and the demand for high performance present ideal grounds in which employees suffer intense pressure at work, lack career prospects and their employers emphasise too much control over them (Rose, 2003, p. 40). The labour relations facing workers in the call centres is made worse by the fact that most of them do not belong to any labour union and therefore their contracts to their employers are negotiated individually (Taylor and Bain, 1999). Since most of call centre employees are young, it is even more likely that they do not consider labour union membership as a necessary thing to get involved in. According to Rose (2002, p. 41), most employees avoid organisational commitment necessary for labour union membership, a position that is further cemented in the employee culture by the employers’ substitution policies that make employees to perceive benefits provided under individual contracts as better that what labour union membership would provide to them. According to Rose (2002, p. 41), this encourages union avoidance by most call centre agents. Notably, employers are within their legal mandate to encourage, pressure or persuade employees against union membership, as long as such actions do not qualify as undue influence (Deery and Mitchell, 1999, 219). Phillips (2002) observes that call centres in Australia offer the labour unions a prime ground to recruit new union members. Starting right from the young managers, Phillips argues that labour unions can easily convince them to take up membership because such young managers are less knowledgeable on “distinguishing bluff from legal authority”. While this opinion suggests that the young managers may be ignorant on the position taken by call centres regarding labour unions, Phillip (2002) states that allowing labour unions to penetrate call centres would be tantamount to giving up the management of such high demanding-centres to the whims of the “selected unions...who would switch off the centres at a moment’s notice”. To this end, the author argues that such actions would diminish the competitiveness of Australian call centres to the international call centres. The argument portended by this author is that while wages offered to call centres is not in contention, increased union membership among call centre employees would jeopardise performance, which would in turn lead to collapse of the call centre industry. These views by Phillips are however refuted by Bain and Taylor (2001, p. 13), who by analysing call centres and labour unions in the United Kingdom concluded that the successful unionisation of call centre employees in the UK was driven by the widespread dissatisfaction that most call centre agents had about their pay. This then suggests that the greatest benefit that union membership may give to individual employees is pay-related. Otherwise, the nature of work in call centres and the performance expectations are well known to the Labour Unions, the employers as well as the employees and are even perceived as necessary to the continued survival of the sector. Bullying management styles is also cited by Bain and Taylor (2001, p.13) as one of the core reasons why call centre employees chose to join labour unions. In cases where specific people are singled out from a large group of employees for allegedly failing to abide by laid down company policies, workers sense that managers are being intimidating hence arousing the need for collective organisation. Health concerns have also been identified as issues that may attract more call centre employees to trade unions. According to Bain and Taylor (2001, p. 13-14), health and safety concerns in call centres are attracting increasing interest with issues such as congested working places and insect infestation being some of the most cited health risks. The excessive stress that comes with the high demanding jobs is also said to worsen employees’ health, while people with pre-existing conditions such as epilepsy and asthma reporting a deterioration of the same. Strategy Goal This strategy seeks to change the individualistic mentality adopted by most young people working in the call centre industry and instead replace it with a collective consciousness that was at the heart of labour unions in the past. To succeed however, this strategy considers that in addition to having full-time employees, WA also have a significant percentage of call centre agents who work on part-time employment, and others who work on casual basis. The strategy therefore needs to devise a way through which such atypical workers will be encouraged to join the labour unions. Since Rodger (1989, p. 1) observes that atypical jobs are characterized with low wages, precarious working conditions, lack of social protection, and often uncertainty regarding the duration of the job, labour unions should work with the government and stakeholders in the call centre industry in order to come up with legislation that guarantees such workers the protection and rights that other workers in full-time employment have (Rodgers, 1989, p. 1). Since the time spent by temporally or casual workers on one job is usually short, Rubery (1989, p. 70) argues that this is one of the reasons that the temporarily and casual workers have little interest in taking up labour union membership. To counter this, the labour unions will need to include civic education among such workers about the benefits that union membership would offer them. Before any effort to start campaigning for call centre workers to take up union membership, the Labour union will have to establish a strong organisational structure that will enable it address issues concerning workers at both the call centres’ level and the national level. This approach is borrowed from Ferner and Hyman (1992), who observe that a union, whose presence is felt at national and firm levels, is more likely to win workers support easily, than would be the case when the union efforts are concentrated either at the firm level or the wider national level. After establishing reliable organisation structure, the labour unions targeting to recruit call centre employees to take up membership, will need to establish the exact needs presented by the call centre agents. As observed elsewhere in this report, too much work, health concerns, bully management styles, working conditions and pay are some of the issues that call centre agents have to contend with across Australia. By formulating agreements that defend the job interests of all call centre agents regardless of whether they are employed on a permanent, temporally, or casual basis will help the labour unions capture the attention of traditional permanent worker constituency as well as the atypical workers. Considering that atypical workers are called upon by the call centres during peak periods when the work cannot be handled by the permanent staff, the labour unions will need to adopt a partial-inclusion strategy that defends such workers on limited but concrete issues. For example, the unions cannot fight to have the atypical workers retained in call centres even when there is no work available for them. Besides being impractical, such a move would be opposed by both the employers as well as the government because it would only disadvantage the call centres. Getting employers willing to negotiate with the unions is also a factor that this strategy considers as essential to the successful union re-entry of call centre workers. In call centres where the employer has been deemed willing to negotiate issues such as pay, working conditions and health factors, labour unions would have an easier time representing workers, something that would appeal to more call centre agents to take up labour union membership. Outcome It is expected that this strategy will have a higher percentage of WA bank call centre agents unionised. In the place of individual contracts signed between employees and the bank, the employees regardless of whether they are employed on a permanent, temporally or casual-basis, will only commence work in the bank’s call centre once a workplace agreement negotiated between the employer and the labour union on behalf of the employee has been signed. This will in turn ensure that all labour union members working in WA Bank are entitled to benefits stipulated in the workplace agreement, and that they can always seek the unions defence if the bank refuses to honour its side of the bargain. Strengths and weaknesses Although WA bank has offered its call centre agents higher wages as an inducement, the labour union would work to ensure that the same wages are retained while offering new benefit assurances to the employees. For instance, collective agreements about the working conditions in the call centre, health cover and social benefits would appeal to the non-unionised members hence encouraging them to take up membership. Since labour unions traditionally represent the interest of the workers, it is unlikely that the negotiators on behalf of the workers would let the wage gains earned under the individual agreements to be lost. This means that the collective agreements would be more appealing to the call centre agents than the individual agreements due to the added benefits. The main weakness in this strategy if implemented in WA bank would be the slow membership uptake levels by call centre agents. This would especially be so because the individual agreements that had permeated the call centre in the bank had even led to union members letting their membership lapse. More to this, the lack of a union delegate in the call centre would further mean that the agents have no representative in the union. To remedy this, the CSAs would have to be encouraged to appoint a delegate who would represent them in the union. Opportunities and Threats Regardless of the increasing wages, Rodger (1989, p. 3) notes that there are other issues that determine whether employees are satisfied at work or not. Working conditions, stress levels, and social benefits such as health cover and paid leave days are just some of the examples. For the Union, the opportunity to recruit new members lies in its ability to negotiate agreements that would ensure that in addition to competent wages, employees are entitled to other benefits and some level of job security. Having established that their is no non-unionism in WA Bank, we cannot be ignorant of the fact of the fact established earlier on in this report that employers discourage their employees from taking up union membership by offering enticing incentives such as higher pay packages. As such, the main threat to the implementation of this strategy would be the employers who would easily employ counter-union measures by giving their employees enticing incentives hence discouraging them from taking up union membership. Driving and restraining forces Among the most notable driving forces for this strategy is the fact that employees are always looking for new ways to improve their position in the workplace. Collective agreements negotiated on their behalf by the unions would no doubt provide them with things like job security, and some bargaining power. Restraining forces could however face the strategy especially if most of people in top management positions in the WA Bank are opposed to the labour union activities in the call centre. Where top managers have agreed to unionisation however, the labour unions would face less resistance from the bank’s management. However, as noted by Ghee and Swee (2001, p. 2), the presence of unionised managers in a firm may pose another restraining force to the union’s agenda, mainly because they may be perceived as having conflicted interested between management matters that requires industrial-relations actions and labour union considerations that require rank-and-file employees to be treated accordingly. Plan The implementation of the strategic plan should take place within six months. During the two three months, the labour union will review the plan for purposes of establishing any risks, and developing counter measures to minimise the effects of the same. A further two months will be dedicated to lobbying support from the relevant authorities, who include government representatives and WA Bank call centre manage. Leaflets and CDs stipulating the benefits of joining labour unions will also be circulated to all the call centre agents. The last two months of the implementation process will be dedicated to recruiting as many call centre agents to take up the labour union membership as possible. A lot of lobbying will take place and any questions that the employees may have regarding the labour union answered. The major foreseeable risk in implementation of this plan is that resistance to labour union membership may still persist regardless of our efforts. However, this will be countered by publicising the benefits of labour union membership to all call centre agents for a prolonged period. This plan presents the best possible strategy for re-entry of labour unions in the call industry in Australia. It not only seeks to dismiss the notion that labour unions are for the old generation and the permanently employed, but also incorporates the temporary and part-time employees in the labour union’s membership. References Bain, P & Taylor, P 2001, ‘Entrapped by the ‘electronic panopticon’? Worker resistance in the call centre,’ New Technology, Work and Employment, vol. 15, no.1, pp. 2-18. Deery, S & Mitchell, R 1999, Employment relations: Individualisation and Union Exclusion: An international study, Sydney, Federation Press Ferner, A & Hyman, R 1992, Introduction into Industrial relations in the new Europe, Blackwell publishers, London. Ghee, S & Swee, P 2001, ‘Executive employees’ rights to union representation in Singapore,’ Singapore Management Review, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 1-12. Phillips, K 2002, Labour Pains: Australian Unions target call centres, Institute of Public Affairs News, viewed Sept.07, 2010, < http://www.ipa.org.au/news/292/labour-pains-australian-unions-target-call-centres/pg/4> Rodgers, G 1989, Precarious work in Eastern Europe: the State if the debate, in Rodgers et al. Precarious jobs and labour market regulation. International Institute for Labour Studies, Geneva. Rose, E2002, ‘The labour process and union commitment within a banking service call centre,’ The Journal of Industrial Relations, vol. 44, no. 1, pp. 40-61. Rubery, J 1989, Precarious forms of work in the United Kingdom, in Rodgers et al. Precarious jobs and labour market regulation. International Institute for Labour Studies, Geneva. Taylor, P &Bain, P 1999, ‘An assembly line in the head: work and employee relations in the call centre,’ Industrial Relations Journal, vol. 30, no. 2, pp. 101-117. Read More