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“All experience shows us that  when women are at the negotiating table, issues that are important to women are brought to the table.” This was a key message from Denise McGuire – a BT employee and president of global union UNI’s world women’s committee.

Denise was presenting at a European contact centre organising event held in London in February where she outlined the work of UNI for working women. In addition to running mentoring programmes, UNI has recently changed its rules to ensure that a minimum of 40% of all its delegations and decision making bodies are female.

When explaining the ‘gender agenda’, Denise stressed the importance of asking and involving women in initiatives, having women active at all levels of an organisation and ensuring that women are visible in campaigns. “Contact centres are like lots of workplaces when it comes to women” she said; “there’s a pyramid with lots of women at the bottom but more often than not a high paid man at the top.” Her words were reinforced by Professor Phil Taylor who later spoke about the glass ceiling being in evidence in contact centres. “Women may make team leader and middle management but rarely higher”, he said.

With women making up large parts of the contact centre workforce – 58% in Scotland and a whopping 78% in southern Europe – it’s an area which unions simply cannot ignore when it comes to recruiting.

Full CWU Women's Talk Issue (Spring/Summer 2015)