It is very common for many American companies to hire subcontractors to handle all of their customer service calls. Countries like India and the Philippines have reaped huge benefits from the call center industry over the years. Companies hire subcontractors in foreign countries because they can pay them a small fraction of the wages that American employees would demand. Another reason is the lack of regulation the call center industry has in other countries. The situation is particularly bad in the Philippines where the country has raked in more than $20 billion over the past 20 years from the call center industry.
There are reports that have started to surface of call center employees in the Philippines working shifts as long as 24 hours in some cases. These people work for a subcontractor that was hired by Amazon. The largest online retailer in the United States claims that all of the subcontractors they hire for their customer service needs give their employees a reasonable work schedule with competitive pay and a work environment that is safe. However, it would appear that nothing could be further from the truth. A woman reported that her marriage was having problems because she was forced to work 15-hour shifts for two weeks straight. She believes that her work schedule taking calls for Amazon has caused her to develop a heart condition.
Amazon also has very strict demands for how long each call center rep should take to handle a call. Amazon has a time limit written into their contracts with the call center subcontractors. In many cases, the time limit is 10 minutes. If the call center rep takes longer than that to solve a customer’s problem, the subcontractor will be fined as much as $3. This makes the managers push their call center employees to complete each call in under the allotted time limit.
There does not seem to be any end in sight for the poor working conditions at call centers in the Philippines. This is because the government does not want to start regulating the industry. Things like graveyard shifts are needed to make the country attractive to large American companies that are looking to outsource their customer service work. The politicians know that regulations of any kind will make many American companies like Amazon take their business to other countries that are less heavily regulated. The money is just too important to these poor countries.
Dil Bole Oberoi
