Auckland call centre workers strike at Australian owned call centre
All twenty-seven market research interviewers working on Monday night at the SurveyTalk call centre in Auckland walked off the job angry at their Australian bosses continued refusal to improve pay rates, health and safety and allow workers to take annual leave like all other research call centre employees can.
The strike is the first strike of the Calling for Change campaign. The Unite Union represents around 400 research workers who are negotiating with research bosses to win union contracts with improved conditions, rates of pay and healthy workplaces at nine of New Zealand’s major market research companies.
Every day of the week the “SurveyTalk” call centre in the Auckland shopping district of Newmarket carries out market research on behalf of major Australian corporations such as Telstra Clear and AMP as well as on behalf of Australia’s leading newspapers like the Melbourne Age and the Sydney Morning Herald.
At 7pm each night workers are crammed into an unsafe, stressful, unhygienic call centre environment, monitored by a video camera on the wall from Sydney. If asked where they are calling from workers are told to lie and say they are calling from Paddington, Sydney.
The outsourced call centre is an attempt by SurveyTalk to avoid paying the good union rates of pay and safe working conditions won by members of the National Union of Workers in Australia.
“Most Auckland SurveyTalk workers earn about NZ$13 an hour or half of what Sydney SurveyTalk workers get (A$21.05). It’s a disgrace that workers relied upon by major Australian corporations for market intelligence are being treated like battery hens. As long as SurveyTalk ignores our reasonable claims for living wages and full work rights the possibility of ongoing strike action at their Auckland call centre will continue,” said Unite National Director Mike Treen.
The strike has the full support of the NUW, and is part of an ongoing transnational organising campaign between the NUW and Unite to fight for the rights of market & social research workers. Aspects of the campaign include the exchange of industry and employer information, the sharing of organising resources, and a transnational union agreement between Unite and the NUW.