Call Center Employees in the Philippines Receive Low-End Jobs, Low Salaries

Call Center Employees in the Philippines Receive Low-End Jobs, Low Salaries

While providing a lot of support to Business Process Outsourcing Companies, the government is ignoring the oppressive working conditions of call center employees.

By MARYA SALAMAT
Bulatlat.com

MANILA – The news that the Philippines has overtaken India in the number of new hires in the call center industry has prompted a labor education NGO recently to warn industry stakeholders and the government against risking its workers’ welfare for the sake of such boom, or the projected boom up to 2016.

“The welfare of workers in BPO institutions must not be compromised for the sake of attracting more investors,” said Anna Leah Escresa-Colina, executive director of the Ecumenical Institute for Labor Education and Research (EILER). Citing the inquiry of the Kabataan Partylist on the “dire conditions of call-center agents,” which served as basis for the filing of House Bill No. 2592, as well as their own research into the plight of call center employees, Escresa-Colina reminded the government that it “must not only foster a good business climate, it must also guarantee good working conditions and protection of workers’ rights.”

Examples of What Filipino BPO Employees Have to Promote on the Job.(Photo by Marya Salamat / bulatlat.com)

BPO employees seem to be little aware of their rights, said employees themselves who attended discussions about their common plight even if they are working in different companies. There are more than 300,000 employed in the sector, some lasting for as long as four years or more. Yet, so far, there is no registered union or association of employees in the industry. This gives the employees little to no say in their working condition, from restroom breaks to determining the work-quotas, length of working hours, computation of wage, overtime pay and vacation leaves, if any, to emergency leaves and being accorded due process in cases of termination or forced/extended/open-ended leaves. Current working conditions account for the high attrition rate in the industry. Company owners and executives, meanwhile, have industry associations that actively lobby for, and achieve, more and better government support for their continuous expansion and profit.

Uphill Climb for Call Center Workers’ Protection

Kabataan Party-list Representative Raymond V. Palatino sponsored the BPO Workers Welfare & Protection Act during the past Congress. This year, he and his staff have been holding roundtable discussions with employees of the BPO industry as they prepare the ground for re-filing the bill.... MORE

Source:  Bulatlat.com

URL: http://bulatlat.com/main/2010/12/11/call-center-employees-in-the-philippines-receive-low-end-jobs-low-salaries/