Call center group to presidentiables: Talk to us, don’t just take pictures

CEBU, Philippines- The Cebu-based Inter-Call Center Association of Workers (ICCAW) is challenging presidential candidates to commit to a platform that will resolve issues involving employees in the industry.

In a statement, ICCAW said it hopes that presidential candidates like Secretary Mar Roxas of the Department of Interior and Local Government, Vice President Jejomar  Binay, Senator Grace Poe, among others, should seriously engage with BPO workers and not just deal on photo opportunities.

ICCAW president Rosie Hong, in a statement, said that a dialogue with BPO workers should lead to a firm commitment to concrete policy and executive actions, rather than end in vague promises that will be easily forgotten once the elections are over.

Hong criticized Roxas’ “charm offensive” with BPO workers at the Cebu City’s IT Park recently.

Hong said that Roxas was very concrete in promising a ‘caravan’ of government offices for faster processing of work-related requirements but in contrast he was obviously ambiguous and non-committal on the issue of workers security of tenure.

 “Security of tenure is not contradictory to the volatile nature of outsourced accounts. Contracts with overseas clients may come and go but the BPO company remains so it cannot deny security of tenure to its employees whose skills are portable and usable to different accounts,” Hong said.

 ICCAW is one of only a few workers associations in the BPO industry. It was founded in Cebu in 2012 as a result of the fight of workers of Direct Access, a call center that was unceremoniously shutdown with 600 of its employees left without jobs and with unpaid wages and benefits.

ICCAW has since expanded nationwide and has organized groups in Metro Manila, Iloilo City and Bacolod.

 With a full-pledged chapter in Cebu, ICCAW sits as a labor representative in the Cebu City tripartite body on the ICT industry.

Among ICCAW’s platform are the demand for industry-wide standards for wages, benefits and entitlement that must be well above the minimum mandated by law and commensurate to profitable dollar-earning nature of the BPO industry.

ICCAW seeks to be an industry-wide organization for employees in the call center and business process outsourcing sector, and be a voice for industry workers’ concerns, grievances, demands and interests.  (FREEMAN)