Teleperformance attempts to silence employees working for AT&T in the Dominican Republic
Teleperformance is attempting to crush workers who speak out against human rights and labour violations in the Dominican Republic.
Teleperformance is attacking the right to free speech by taking court action to fire union Secretary of Organization Oliver Benson, who works on its AT&T account, who criticized its business model by writing the following on social media:
“Companies like Verizon, AT&T, Samsung and others outsource their operations to companies like Teleperformance, Convergys and Alorica with the objective of reducing COSTS. These companies take advantage of the economic situation and the low educational quality of many countries in the world, mainly in Latin America, to squash labor rights and basic human rights”.
AT&T outsources US English language calls from its Cricket brand to Teleperformance’s Dominican operation. Workers at Teleperformance’s Dominican operations have been attempting to form a union since May 2016.
The Teleperformance union in the Dominican Republic has been effective in forcing the company to comply with labor legislation, such as the payment of the compulsory night shift allowance.
UNI Global Union and its affiliates want Teleperformance to end the harassment and legal cases against union leaders in the Dominican Republic, allow staff the freedom to join a union, and begin genuine dialogue to resolve problems at the site.
Other problems at Telepeformance’s Dominican operations include:
- The company is also attempting to fire and silence the President of the union Pedro Ramirez by alleging workplace faults.
- Teleperformance is attempting to remove the right of employees to unionize by deregistering their union through the courts
- Teleperformance continues to have legal compliance issues in the Dominican Republic related to non-payment of lunch breaks, toilet breaks and water breaks.
Other clients of Teleperformance in the Dominican Republic include Fed-Ex, Mega-Bus (Stagecoach), Florida Blue and Khols.
Problems with labor and human rights abuses in the Dominican Republic have been raised on several occasions with senior Teleperformance and AT&T management since May 2016, but insufficient action has been taken to ensure compliance.
Paris based Teleperformance is the world’s largest provider of outsourced contact center services, with more than 190,000 employees in 65 countries around the world.
The union of Telepeformance workers in the Dominican Republic is called the Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Empresa Teleperformance de la República Dóminicana. The union is part of the FEDOTRAZONAS Dominican labor federation.
FEDOTRAZONAS is an affiliate of UNI Global Union, an international trade union federation that represents over 20 million service sector workers around the world, based in Nyon, Switzerland.