Customer Service Organising Month
October 2003
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callcentres@union-network.org

The "Customer Service Organising Month" will bring together UNI’s efforts to organise customer service workers and add some focus to the initiatives started with the Call Centers Action Day of November 1999.  This is an area where there are a lot of young workers, workers with atypical employment contract arrangements (individual contracts, agency workers etc.) and workers working outside  of traditional boundaries.  Customer service centres are largely unorganised although there have been a lot of efforts from UNI affiliates in recent times to recruit members from this group of workers.

The aims of the "Customer Service Organising Month" are:

To increase membership by the development of organising structures
To recruit workers in customer service centres all around the world into trade unions
To elect trade union representatives and get recognition
To represent workers’ interests through collective bargaining, i.e. win better conditions for staff with a union
        charter
To promote the UNI Call Centres Minimum Standards
To promote the right to training & certification for all customer service professionals
To raise the recognition of the skills and professionalism of customer service professionals
To develop a network of UNI affiliates which facilitates:

Co-operation in cross-border activities

Co-operation in training organisers

Co-operation in multinational companies

As part of the UNI Organisers Network, to set up a customer service centres network and to develop a new
       database with affiliates for sharing information and experiences, including:

Health & safety, teleworking, customer service centres agreements etc. 
Online organising and the use of technology as an organising tool
Organising and servicing customer service professionals with new types of contracts
       such as personal individual contracts

There is going to be a special emphasis on organising young workers in customer service call centres as they make up the majority of employees. Many young workers are employed directly from school or college, which means that they are particularly vulnerable to poor terms, conditions and pay.