Big businesses in the UK still running call centres and operating on-site amid COVID-19 are being slammed as irresponsible as they recklessly put profit before the health and wellbeing of employees.
Several of the UK’s biggest corporations, including Tesco Bank and Sky, have been criticised in recent weeks for risking the health of staff by encouraging them to come into call centres to work as support staff and contribute on non-essential sales.
On March 19, the UK government published a list of "key worker" professions, referring to people deemed essential in the frontline fight against COVID-19, and whose children would continue to receive educational provision as schools remained closed across the country.
The list includes employees working in the telecommunications sector, including those working in field engineering, network operations and call centres.
The somewhat ambiguous key worker list gave sufficient bait for companies operating within the "telecommunications" and "essential items" brackets to keep their call centres and business premises open, encouraging staff to keep going to work and essentially maintain business "open as usual," even as severe and unprecedented isolation measures are being advised to thwart the spread of the virus.
Unions in Britain say they have been inundated with an “extraordinary volume” of emails and calls from workers worried that their places of work put them at risk of contracting the virus. In response to criticism that employees are being allowed to continue to work in potentially unsafe centralised offices, the Scottish Trade Unions Congress urged big businesses to urgently rethink strategies.
Dave Moxham, deputy director of the STUC, said that a significant percentage of the calls are being made from call centre staff.
“Call centres play an essential role in providing advice, maintaining digital infrastructure. However, many of them also have massive sales and marketing departments," Moxham said. "Call centre workers at Sky alerted us to the failure to send home non-essential staff which also made it impractical to maintain social distancing.”
Another big brand coming under scrutiny is Virgin Media. The company's engineers – individuals classed as ‘key workers’ as they conduct essential maintenance on TV and internet services – have voiced disdain over the company’s dubious commitments in recent weeks. The company has been accused of putting profit ahead of workers’ health and safety by asking engineers to complete around eight to 10 installations a day, despite strict lockdown measures.
Talking to the PA news agency, one Virgin Media engineer said: “Virgin are still making us do brand new installs. Every engineer in the country is kicking off about it. Their point of view is that they’re following the government guidelines but they’re not. We’re giving someone a new service when they’ve already got broadband or a TV box with someone else. Normally people are only changing because they’re getting a better deal. We’re happy to do maintenance of course, as that’s outside work so isn’t a problem, we just don’t want to go inside people’s homes.”
Similar concerns have also been made by employees at Virgin Media call centres. Members of staff from a Virgin Media call centre near Manchester have raised concerns about the company putting their health at risk by asking them to continue working at the centre to carry out non-essential customer retention duties, tasks that staff believe could easily be automated.
Tragically, one of Virgin Media's employees from the call centre, who had been self-isolating with coronavirus symptoms, died. The death prompted the temporary closure of the office for a deep clean.
The call centre has also since informed employees that it would be offering homeworking options. On March 20, the UK chancellor, Rishi Sunak, announced the state would pay grants to businesses to cover 80 percent of the salary of workers if companies kept them on their payroll, rather than laying them off as the economy slows due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
For many people working in sales environments, and whose salaries are only made respectable by the commissions they earn, the prospect of not going into work and only receiving a portion of their basic pay amid the crisis is daunting, despite the associated risks to health while working in confined spaces like call centres.
As one Virgin Media employee who works in sales, and preferred not to be named, told Occupy: “It’s stressful trying to decide whether to stay at home on 80 percent of my basic wage – which is probably less than half my overall monthly salary – or go to work and hope to be paid my usual commissioned pay.
“I’m pleased they’re now offering homeworking. They should have done this weeks ago.”
As sales staff in call centres, offices and other business premises are forced to choose whether to keep going to work and risk their health but maintain livable earnings, or stay at home and try to live on significantly less, big businesses continue to pay out extortionate sums to shareholders.
News recently emerged that the retail giant Tesco was to pay out £900 million to shareholders, despite receiving a £585 million tax break from the government as part of the business rates holiday for the current financial year.
The move to hand out vast amounts of cash to investors has been called “aggressive,” and the government’s tax break for the company condemned as a “scandal.”
Such unfair conditions are creating a hostile backlash among many workers. As a member of staff from the luxury fashion retailer told the Manchester Evening News: “I work for a fashion retail store selling luxury items – this is not essential work. I have a young child and a partner who is severely asthmatic. She is very anxious about me being at work and I am worried about putting my family at risk.
“I feel my health and safety and wellbeing of my family is being overlooked for the sake of profit."
