Not all sunlight bright in sunshine industry

CALL CENTERS

MANILA, Philippines—Theirs are the 400,000 voices that give hope to the country’s newest sunshine industry, where frequent “hellos” and “goodbyes” mark the high staff turnover rate and where young dreams are woven and false hopes are raised.

Welcome to the world of contact-service centers in the Philippines—the phenomenon more commonly known as the call-center industry.

Filipino business process outsourcing (BPO) workers have become a major contributor to the economy, providing customer service and technical support on behalf of client companies. Revenues generated from the BPO sector surged to $6 billion in 2008 from $350 million in 2001.

Making up the second largest BPO industry in the world, Philippine call centers continue to attract young professionals regardless of educational background, lured by an average starting salary of P15,000, plus other incentives for good performance.

The International Labor Organization (ILO), in a study released in July this year, pegged the average monthly salary of BPO employees in the Philippines at P16,928, way above the prevailing minimum wage of less than P10,000.

“The pay is really high compared with other jobs but the turnover is very fast. One will really give up because of the lack of sleep,” said Carlo Pablo Tanedo, 36, a former team manager of Stream Global, a United States-based premium provider of customer care and BPO services.

Tanedo was earning P40,000 monthly until he was fired by his employer for having been absent for two days in one year, he said.

“I had a perfect attendance record in the company for 10 months. When you enter the call center, you are perfectly healthy but the lack of sleep will make you sick,” Tanedo said.

“So on the 11th month, I got sick. I did call on the first day I was absent to inform them but was not able to do that on the second day,” he said.

Tanedo was fired last May. He then filed a case against his employer for terminating him without cause.

High turnover rate

Not all is bright in this industry.

The Call Center Association of the Philippines pegs the turnover rate at 60 to 80 percent, the highest in the world. In some companies, it can go as high as 100 percent annually.

A full-time call-center agent stays in a contact center for an average of 22 months. Part-time agents stay for an even shorter period, 10 months. The high turnover rate may be attributed primarily to health concerns.

The ILO said that 42.6 percent of Filipino call-center agents suffer from sleep disorders, fatigue, eye strain, neck, shoulder and back pains and voice problems.

Risky sexual behaviour

Night workers also tend to adopt dangerous habits like drinking, illegal drug use to stimulate themselves, and risky sexual activities after work, making them prone to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS.

Such was the case of “Joseph Ryan” (not his real name), a call-center worker who went on television in March this year to share his HIV story.

But Dr. Edcel Maurice Salvana of the University of the Philippines–Institute of Mental Health said there is no direct correlation between working at night and contracting HIV because workers from other industries are also exposed to risky sexual behavior.

No union

The stress-related death of call-center agent Dingdong Flores, who suffered hypertension while at work in 2007, underscored the need to provide decent working conditions in the industry, including the need for on-call doctors to attend to emergencies, and to develop support mechanisms to combat stress.

On the labor side, there is practically no workers’ union in the BPO industry, former Senator Ernesto Herrera, secretary-general of the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines, said.

While freedom of association, the right to organize, collective bargaining, living wages, and security of tenure are guaranteed by the Labor Code and the ILO conventions, trade unionists find it hard to organize industry players because most of them are first-time employees and young professionals who are hesitant to complain or are unaware of labor rights.

For some, their contracts simply prohibit them from forming a union.

Labor rights

A few call-center workers, however, have started training with the TUCP on union formation for purposes of collective bargaining, Herrera said.

Jonathan Sale of the UP School of Labor and Industrial Relations said most call-center workers were actually interested in joining unions to have better negotiating positions.

He stressed that organizing efforts should be industry-based and not enterprise-based due to the high attrition rate.

A serious question persists: Does business outsourcing pose a clear and present danger to labor rights?

“It is already with us. For as long as it is done in accordance with the law and unless the law is changed—it is still the (same) Constitution and the Labor Code—then outsourcing should be recognized in the country,” Labor Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz said, citing a global trend.

Bills in Congress

In 2008, the Department of Labor and Employment released a circular guiding BPO companies in forming occupational safety and health programs for their employees, including capacity-building for health and safety concerns.

Several bills are pending in Congress which seek to protect BPO workers from understaffing or overloading; provide them freedom from interference or coercion, protection from discrimination; and guarantee safeguards in administrative proceedings.

It is ironic, Herrera said, that workers in the BPO voice services have no voice to improve their well-being.

“The BPO is the fastest growing industry in the Philippines, and right now, everybody would like to work in the call centers. That is why the government should protect its workers and consider this phenomenon if we want to revisit the Labor Code,” he said. –Cynthia Balana, Philippine Daily Inquirer