Management Responses to Unions in Australian Call Centres

Exclude Tolerate or Embrace?

By Patricia Todd, Joan Eveline, Leonie Still and Judy Skene

Unions have identified call centres as an important sector to organise.

While there is now substantial literature illustrating call centres as high control workplaces, and therefore difficult sites to organise. The question as to what extent these high control strategies reflect management attitudes towards union organisation in call centres has been much less addressed. In this study there were union members within 15 of the 20 call centres although only 3 had more than 50% density. The study found a bipolar pattern of responses by centre managers to a union presence, with 8 accepting the union's right to act within their call centre and, conversely, 8 opposing union involvement.