Contact center and BPO employees in the Philippines have secured a formal seat at the negotiating table with social partners. The Philippine government, together with employee and employer organizations, has approved the so-called Ad Hoc BPO Subcommittee.

 

The consultative body provides over 2 million customer contact and BPO employees nationwide with an institutional and recognized channel to raise bottlenecks directly with employers and the government. The committee serves as a permanent platform for ongoing consultation on the most urgent issues in the sector, including freedom of association, collective bargaining, occupational safety and health, staffing adjustments, technological developments, productivity, and other themes.

According to involved union members, supported by UNI Global Union, the ad-hoc subcommittee is “a hard-fought space for the millions of BPO workers who keep our economy running but are too often left to fend for themselves in the face of questionable business practices.”

For ordinary BPO employees, who are under pressure daily on the contact center floor, the development represents a long-awaited opportunity to be heard directly by decision-makers, according to UNI Global Union.

“In my two decades in the sector, when we had problems with workload, night shifts, or constantly changing metrics, there was nowhere we could turn except to HR, which often sided with management,” said Livy Bensi, a BPO employee from Cebu. “Now that there is a subcommittee, we have hope that we can explain our true situation without fear of being targeted or fired.”

(UNI Global Union)

Human Resources