UK union scouts for members in call centres

After failing to stop the exodus of call centre jobs to India, the leading banking union in the UK, Unifi, is planning a membership drive among staff employed in India by Britain's high street banks.

Unifi, representing 158,000 employees in the UK, was working with Union Network International, a global trades union congress, to offer representation to more than 50,000 employees in call centres and data processing operations, its spokesman said on Sunday.

"We are very keen that when UK jobs go overseas, the people who get them can join a trade union. We can help to improve their terms and conditions through negotiation," Unifi National Secretary Rob O'Neill said.

Union Network International has held a series of meetings in Bangalore and Hyderabad to publicise the services provided by unions, and officials said the response was positive.

Staff at Indian call centres typically receive about 10 per cent of the salary paid to their counterparts in the UK. But the salaries are viewed as high relative to what other local professionals earn and such jobs are in great demand.

"It is proven that where there is union representation, the price of labour goes up," a union official said.

"These centres want the best staff so they should be prepared to pay the best salaries," O'Neill added.

Meanwhile, according to a draft report prepared by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad), India should take the lead in bringing legal restrictions placed on outsourcing under the framework of multilateral trade negotiations.

The international body on trade and development, in its preliminary findings, has suggested "India should take the initiative to see legal restrictions placed on outsourcing (for example, the New Jersey Bill) are brought within the coverage of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS)".

A number of US states, including Michigan and Washington, have taken steps to curb the outflow of such services to overseas destinations.

The report says the services have the potential to lift India out of poverty just as the phenomenal growth in manufacturing in China has sharply reduced the incidence of poverty there.

It points out that contrary to public perception that services provide employment for highly skilled workers, some calculations have revealed that nearly two-thirds of employment in the services sector may consist of low skilled or medium skilled people, pointing to their high potential for poverty alleviation in India.

"By directly employing both skilled and unskilled personnel, its poverty alleviation effects are very high and of even greater importance are the indirect effects through remittances, which are real injections into the economy and have multiplier growth effects," it said.

It further said liberalisation in movement of service suppliers could be of extreme importance to India given its vast reservoir of qualified and trained personnel.