british telecom/brighton.england

text in german
From the hotlines-leaflet from Brighton (March 2001):

If you have a fault with your phone line or a problem with your internet connection you'll end up calling BT 150 or 151. That's the number for the fault centre. We work in the one in Brighton, but there are similar centres in other parts of the country including Glasgow, Blackburn, Leicester and Coventry. The call centre in Brighton is open 7 days a week from 7am until 11pm, and lots of shifts operate within these hours (7-12, 9-14, 12-17 etc.). Overtime is normal especially for those who work ‘part-time'. You can't live on the wage otherwise. But of course you have to toe the line to get it.
We get a paid 10min break and a paid 15min computer screen break during the shift. These are monitored through the ACD - if we take more it shows up on our stats and we get grief from the manager. And if we want to use the toilet it is taken out of our 10 min break.
Most of us work at BT through an employment agency - only a few work directly for BT itself. In November 1999 full-time staff all over the UK went on strike over this, as the number of agency workers was increasing and were replacing full-timers. But there was only one strike day because the union called the others off. So in the end nothing changed except that the union made itself a more comfortable bed inside BT's call centres. At this time Manpower was the agency, but they were replaced by Hays a few months later. When Hays took over they changed the time we were paid overtime from: before it was after 6pm, now it was after 8pm! And they reduced the supplement from time and-three-quarters to time-and-a-half. Workers fought back against this but in the end many left. If they hadn't, maybe we could have stopped it… Since then work has got worse. We're hassled about our stats everyday, there is constant pressure. You get about three minutes to deal with each call - that's the limit to customer service. If anything's going to change its up to us.


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