Call Centres

Victory for call centre employees

A Full Bench of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission, headed by the President, has handed down a decision which will make the Contract Call Centre Industry Award the minimum industry benchmark Australia wide for call centre workers.

This follows the recent decision of the Commission to apply the award as the safety net benchmark for all contract call centre employees in Victoria. The decision is a victory for the ASU and other call centre unions who along with the ACTU have campaigned for this outcome for some years.

The major contract call centre employers vigorously opposed the award and the ASU has active membership with all these employers including Salesforce, TeleTech and Salmat. These employers wanted their own in-house awards and to continue with inferior working conditions.

The Full Bench rejected commission or incentive/performance based pay, preferred by Salesforce, as being contrary to the concept of an award safety net. The employers' argument of requiring cheaper labour costs and more "flexibility" to remain "internationally competitive" was also overwhelmingly rejected.

Most importantly the AIRC has endorsed the 7 grade competency/career based classification structure and minimum rates of pay; spread of hours; penalty rates for Saturday/Sunday/Public Holiday/Shift work, overtime pay; 25% casual loading; 38 hour week and annual leave. The AIRC also rejected the employers argument for a 12 hour, rather than 10 hour, daily limit.

Sadly the decision comes at a time when the Federal Government intends to smash awards and gut the Commission.

The ASU will continue to fight for safer and more secure working conditions for call centre workers that can only be achieved by award regulation underpinning the right for all call centre workers to bargain collectively.