I visited HMRC Bradford Contact Centre today.
I met Josh Walsh the local Young Members Rep and Trudy Bates who is Branch President of Bradford Revenue and District branch at 11:00.
Josh took Trudy and I on a tour of the contact centre and introduced me the PCS reps there if they weren't occupied on the phone.
Josh then showed me his workstation and explained how the Contact Centre operated. He explained that calls could be routed to the Bradford contact centre from anywhere in the country and that the contact centre was currently responsible for Debt Management, New Tax Credits and Taxes work.
He then showed me how the aspect code system worked. For every minute of every day the contact centre workers must enter a code which describes their current activity.
These include taking calls, unscheduled breaks and time spent 'wrapping up a call' by recording details or carrying out actions on HMRC systems.
Using this system HMRC contact centre management can identify exactly how much time is being used up on breaks by an individual worker, by contact centre or nationally.
Contact Centre workers are therefore constantly under pressure not just to reduce the time spent on calls so more calls cans be answered within a day to reduce queing but also to reduce anytime spent on unscheduled breaks.
All such times are not just shown on management stat sheets but also on Whiteboards which are dotted around the office.
Josh related a story to me that a member of staff had been disciplined for taking 8 seconds longer than 15 minutes on a scheduled break. HMRC contact centre staff are allowed two 15 minute breaks in a day as well as half an hour for dinner.
After explaining the aspect system, Josh explained that a spreadsheet had to be reffered to in order to book leave. Unlike many other areas of the civil service, in contact centres workers cannot simply book leave whenever they like.
Unless there are the required amount of workers in on a certain day no one is allowed to take any leave.
The whole system in contact centres in designed to run with as little staff resources as possible to answer as many calls as possible with little reference to quaility.
This has consequently led to many people claiming to have been bullied in a staff health and safety survey conduced by PCS and also claim that they are extremely stressed so as to endanger their own helath.
After this explanation we set up stall in one of the contact centres 'break out' areas.
I got the chance to talk to a few young members working in the contact centre and also signed them up to the young members network and asked them to sign the petition.
There was common theme to the workers concerns at Bradford contact centre and that was the stress they suffered and the fact they had to deal with reduced flexible working conditions as opposed to other areas of the civil service.
I told them about the Early Day Motion I am trying to get the PCS parliametary group to table in parliament which will ask for the Contact Centre charter to be enacted into law.
I also told them that I thought contact centre workers to a certain extent had been let down by PCS because we should be demanding that they have the same flexible working conditions as all other civil servants in their department.
I finished by stating that if they had any concerns they wished to raise with me they could e-mail me.
I am hoping the meetings we in the young members network have arranged in contact centres up and down the country during young trade unionist week will produce some great ideas about how we can campaign together in unity for betters conditions for contact centre workers.
After we had tidied up our stall Josh and I talked about what we could do to campaign for contact centre workers.
We both believe a strong motion to conference asking for industrial action to be taken throughout the civil service until true flexibility is granted for contact centres would be a good way forward.
The call centre charter should also include clearer demands for flexible working
and
There should be regular updates from the NEC on what they are doing to secure the objectives of the call centre charter.
I am hoping this week will be the start of a campaign for better conditions for contact centre worker and this will gain momentum until our next PCS conference.
Myself and Tracy Edwards are hoping to arrange a cross union meeting on the subject soon and I also hope that we can produce postcards for MP's on the issue once we have an Early Day Motion submitted.
I'll finish by relating to you something which Josh said to me which stuck. He said "Work in this country is changing and it's going to become more like this"
I agree if you are not already in a contact centre or having all your work actions monitored in time and motion studies, you could well find this happening soon.
If we don't defend contact centre workers now it could be you next. I would ask all trade union members to bear this in mind.
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