Employment relationships in telecommunications services and in the call centre industry

Issues paper for discussion at the Global Dialogue Forum on the Employment Relationships in Telecommunications Services and in the Call Centre Industry (Geneva, 27–28 October 2015)

This paper provides an overview of employment relationships across the telecommunications services subsector and the call centre industry, which straddle and serve many sectors (“contact centre” is the more standard term in many countries, reflecting the transition from “voice-only” operations to “multichannel” or “blended” customer interaction using email/electronic messaging, social media and smartphone applications). It also indicates possible trends in employment, work organization, workforce composition, contractual conditions and employment relationships, focusing on fixed-term, temporary, project based, subcontracted and agency work in these industries, rather than on standard employment relationships, which have become increasingly rare these days.