KOLKATA - Call-center and help-desk
operators, data-entry clerks and telemarketers -
in short back-office workers - may be considered
the poorly paid sweatshop laborers of the
information age in the developed world.
But in India the huge back-office or
business-process outsourcing (BPO) workforce is
viewed as a respected professional elite which is
relatively well paid vis-a-vis those in many other
industries. Labor union protection would seem
unnecessary.
But that is about to change.
As India's burgeoning BPO continues to
emerge as one of the largest employment sectors -
employing about 400,000 - many
feel its primarily
"young and innocent" workforce is fast turning
into cyber workers who are treated "more like
indigent laborers" who toil long hours with little
or no commensurate reward.
Consequently,
sparks of trade unionism have already started
emerging in the BPO and call-center industries as
local as well as international trade unions are
stepping up their efforts to bring the IT and BPO
sectors into their folds.
Two weeks ago,
the Center of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) - a
left-affiliated labor union and one of the largest
in the country - announced that it had set up a
small union for the IT and IT-enabled services
(ITES) sectors in Kolkata, considered to be the
epicenter of union movement.
And the
organization has deployed its cadres in Bangalore,
Chandigarh, Chennai and Hyderabad to organize a
union of IT workers. WR Varda Rajan, the CITU
secretary, said these organizations can't strictly
be called trade unions yet but rather they are
"more like a forum". Still, he added that "by end
2006 we are aiming to set up a nationwide IT
workers' union".
CITU is not alone: a
global trade union is making inroads in the
country. Union Network International, an umbrella
group of 900 skills and services-sector unions,
has also launched, under the wings of the Center
for Business Process Outsourcing Professionals, a
new BPO/ITES organization called Unites
Professionals.
UNITES Pro - as its members
call it - has already taken root in six major
Indian cities: Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai,
Mumbai, Cochin and Delhi. "In the second stage
centers are planned wherever ITES is
concentrated," said Narayan Hegde, who is leading
Unites Professionals effort to unionize the Indian
BPO sector.
Neither of these new
organizations is willing to reveal membership
strength yet, but both say they have enough
members to go ahead. "We do not want to reveal the
numbers," Varda Rajan said. "ITES workers are
forced to deny a need for unions because
union-busting has been a prevalent practice in all
the IT hubs [in India]. But Narayan Hegde added
that "the numbers are large enough to initiate a
movement in the country".
And clearly
"movement" is a word that is sending shivers down
the industry's spine. Calling it a retrograde
step, Kiran Karnik, president of National
Association of Software and Service Companies
(NASSCOM), said the local IT industry lobby feels
unions in the IT industry will be "counter
productive". Pavan Duggal, a noted cyber lawyer,
feels unionizing a nascent sector such as BPO,
which in just five years has earned US$6 billion
in export revenues and promises 40% growth every
year, "could kill this industry".
Even BPO
workers are divided. The Call Centers Association
of India (CCAI), for instance, feels international
business such as BPO should not encourage unionism
because the demands of the unions could make
call-center operations more expensive compared to
competing countries such as Vietnam, Indonesia and
China, which are already gunning for a share of
India's pie. Unions in the industry "could hamper
India's image as one of the most favorite IT and
ITES investment destinations", said Sam Chopra,
CCAI president.
Yet the movement seems to
be gaining momentum. According to Karthik Shekhar,
general secretary of UNITES Pro, "Many have
realized that for ensuring physical well-being and
job security there is a need for unions."
Although precise numbers are difficult to
gather, Shekhar reckons about 4,000 BPO workers
are already active in the two unions. State
governments are giving all possible incentives to
owners/employers of the ITES sector, he said. "But
what are the Indian governments doing for the BPO
workers?" he asked. About 1.1 million workers are
expected to be working in the sector by 2008.
Incentives for the country's BPO sector
may be directed toward the employers, but NASSCOM
doesn't agree that Indian BPO workers are a
neglected lot. "In the IT industry, you'll find
that young people have direct access to the CEO of
their companies," Karnik said. "They speak with
confidence and dignity without any fear of
victimization. In fact, IT company managements
fear workforce attrition and loss of scarce
talent."
While an average Indian earns
about $600 a year, and many, even with an
education, make less working perhaps longer and
harder, a BPO worker with only a high-school level
education brings in more than $2,500 a year -
about twice the earning level of an entry-level
high school teacher, accountant or marketing
professional with a graduate degree.
With
experience and education, BPO salaries go much
higher. Also, there are other benefits, such as
door-to-door transport, security-guard escorts,
refreshments on the employer, a yearly
company-paid picnic or excursion pleasure trip,
in-house health club facilities and the like.
But all that glisters is not gold. Most
BPO workers, especially the call-center workers,
complain that they are highly stressed in their
jobs and that causes friction in their social
lives. The common refrain is that the odd working
hours - to maintain the working hours of the
Western hemisphere most BPO shifts start at 6 pm
and continue well past 4 am - make one
incommunicable and out of touch with their
society, as they sleep days and work nights.
"Moreover, there is the constant
frustration of handling irate and abusive
customers," said Raghavan Iyer, a disillusioned
BPO worker.
Unionists also feel that
global firms that are increasingly farming out all
those tasks that can be done by a computer to
India are exploiting the Indian workforce by
contracting the work out at a fraction of what
they would have to pay in their home countries.
"No doubt the physical deprivation of
Indian BPO workers [is] enormous ... working hours
are not limited [to] eight and 12 hours and they
are subject to working in a congested cubicle for
hours at a stretch," said CITU's Varda Rajan, "but
they are also economically deprived."
BPO
workers are well paid in local terms, though
global firms pay "just a fraction of what they pay
to similar workers at home," he said. According to
Deloitte Research in the United States, an
American software engineer earns eight times more
than his Indian counterpart; for BPO workers the
disparity is even greater.
"As employees
we want to unite to prevent the Walmartization of
the BPO sector," UNITES Pro's Karthik Shekhar
said. "We want all the MNCs [multinational
corporations] that operate captive BPO centers in
India [such as IBM, Accenture, Transworks, First
Indian Corporation, Repcol of Australia, Origin
and Belair from the United Kingdom as well as HSBC
of Hong Kong] to follow minimum working hours,
health plans, insurance; in short whatever is
provided by them across the world should be
provided in India too."
Nevertheless,
there are a few on the employer side who support
the idea of BPO unions. "If a union movement
brings in best practices in the sector and works
towards reducing attrition as they do in the UK
and US, it is good for the sector," said T Kurien,
CEO of Wipro BPO. A similar view is held by Raman
Roy, one of the founders of the Indian BPO sector,
who said, "Unions are good if they control the
menace of attrition that is emerging as a
stumbling block to BPO sector's growth."
And global consultancy firm, Gartner,
feels that the emergence of unionism is actually a
sign that the BPO sector is gaining maturity.
"Union formation occurs when any industry reaches
its peak," said Craig Batty, vice president at
Gartner. "The Indian BPO sector is heading that
way and this will bring more advantages to the
sector."
But all those who are still wary
of unions can take solace in the fact that unlike
a typical union, none of the organizers say they
are contemplating a movement that will indulge in
strikes and other disruptive pursuits.
"Even today we do not contemplate
launching a typical union," said Varda Rajan. "We
are not in favor of strikes and do not believe
that anybody should be forced to go on a strike
either." Narayan Hegde added, "UNITES Pro is not a
conventional union. Its objective is not to
initiate strikes or indulge in practices that
hamper the working of the Indian ITES sector. The
objective is to organize a collected bargaining
force to tackle difficult situations."
And
that should bring a sigh of relief to many in the
sector.
Indrajit Basu is a
Kolkata-based equity-analyst-turned-journalist
with more than 12 years of experience in
business/finance and technology journalism.
Besides writing for Asia Times Online, he also
writes for US-based publications, as well as IT
companies.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times
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