The time an employee needs to log in to various systems must be seen as working time and must therefore be paid. That is the verdict in a lawsuit between Teleperformance and an employee, according to De Telegraaf in a message of April 8. Teleperformance has appealed against the ruling. TP says it does not impose timely login as a requirement.

 

District Court of The Hague issued at the end of last year a case from an employee against employer Teleperformance about the payment of time required to log in to various IT systems, so that the calling task can be started exactly according to the work schedule. The court allowed the claim for back wages, because the time needed to log in can be regarded as working time.

Log into systems

The case concerned an employee who made the request to employer Teleperformance to pay the time required for logging in, also with retroactive effect. The session report shows that prior to recording or starting his first call, the employee in question must log in to the time registration system, the roster, the e-mail program (including viewing incoming e-mail), the customer system, the agenda (including for callback requests), the community (forum), the e-shop tool Netherlands, the e-shop tool Belgium, the remote call (teamviewer) and the notepad. The programs must all be ready to answer the customers who dial in or are about to be called.

6 to 20 minutes preparation time

In the lawsuit, the employee referred, among other things, to previous rulings such as those of Subdistrict Court in Roermond of 12 November 2020, from which it follows that the time required for logging in counts as working time and must be paid. As part of the defence, Teleperformance has had an investigation carried out at all clients for which work is being performed. That research has shown that employees are expected to log in somewhere between 20 and 6 minutes before the start of the shift, depending on the project they are working on. The judge did not agree with TP's defense that the time prior to the shift should not be seen as working time because the employee can then also do other non-work related things.

“No sanction, no demand”

“Teleperformance does not agree with the court's ruling and is appealing. We do not agree with the judge's ruling as it was made on the basis of a number of incorrect assumptions," said Norbert van Liemt (CEO Teleperformance Benelux & Suriname) in a first response to Ziptone. “We also see this as a broader discussion. It is common practice in many sectors for employees to be asked to be ready before work starts to perform work before a shift starts where early attendance is unpaid.”

According to Van Liempt, TP asks employees “within reason to ensure that they are on time and ready to perform their duties. It is not a requirement or an instruction, nor is it sanctioned.” That is also the reason for the appeal, according to Van Liemt.

Points of criticism

The ruling of the District Court of The Hague in this case has also been cited earlier in the report Not a Great Place to Work: The Case for Building a Better Workplace at Teleperformance of the UNI Global Union, the international federation of trade unions, it now appears. In the report, UNI Global Union drew attention to, among other things, employees logging in to Teleperformance systems. In several countries, employees say that logging into the various systems takes time that is not paid. Other criticisms are that other forms of unpaid work exist within specific establishments, such as calls that extend beyond the end of a shift; working during breaks to meet KPIs, unpaid toilet breaks, employees not receiving promised or earned bonuses, and home workers having their wages cut when the internet or power grid goes down. The report is of course known to TP, says Van Liemt, who also sees this as the subject of a broader discussion that goes beyond, for example, login times.

Also other issues

UNI Global Union's findings were presented on Thursday, March 24, during a closed meeting with some of Teleperformance's largest shareholders. The report also notes problems at sites in other countries (including Albania, Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, Jamaica, the Philippines, Romania, Spain, the UK, the US, Portugal and Poland) in terms of security, “excessive surveillance” and “thwarting trade union formation”.

UNI Global Union also made a number of recommendations for Teleperformance in its March 2022 report, including payment for all time worked, including login time and minutes beyond the end of a shift. UNI Global Union has not investigated any other facility contact centers to our knowledge. (Ziptone/Erik Bouwer)

Featured, Human Resources Teleperformance