HYDERABAD: Call it industry maturity or simply `enabling.' Seven call centre professionals from different cities and working in various companies have filed an application with the Registrar of Trade Unions to kick start the first trade union for ITES professionals - Union for ITES Professionals (UNITES).

Headquartered in Bangalore, this new set-up has founder members drawn from HSBC, ABN AMRO India, Sitel, Wipro Spectramind, and Teledata Informatics working in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Delhi, Tiruvananthapuram, Kochi and Mumbai.

And, they make no pretence of their objective of protecting the interests of the call centre professionals. "We don't shy away as a forum, this is a union," J.S.R. Prasad, Director of Centre for BPO professionals, Hyderabad, asserted.

Affiliation soon

UNITES will be soon affiliated to the Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC). With recognition from the International Labour Organisation already under its belt, the union will organise call centre professionals at its six chapters in various cities through meetings, workshops and distribution of pamphlets.

An eight-member national executive committee of UNITES has been formed with P.P Naidu, an HSBC Hyderabad call centre employee, as president. A formal announcement will be made with the distribution of pamphlets outside the HSBC office in Banjara Hills and by garlanding Mr. Naidu as he emerges from his shift at 7 a.m. on Thursday, said Mr. Prasad.

The initiative was spearheaded by a Switzerland-based international federation of unions, Union Network International (UNI), which has 900 affiliated unions across 150 countries and in a cross section of industries like telecom, food, oil, etc.

Panel formed

The entire process began at an UNI National Convention in Mumbai on September 19, 2005, where an All India committee to establish the union was formed. Subsequently, three `Development and Organising Centres' (UNI-DOC) at Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad were set up to consolidate.

Mr. Prasad, also the National Director of UNI-DOC, points out that firms like HSBC recognise and have globalisation agreements with unions in UK and felt it should follow a similar policy in India.

He assuages all fears of slogan mongering and strikes generally associated with traditional unions.

"We are not against the industry. We want the industry to flourish but we want the workers interests to be protected," he explains.

"We want to be a progressive union with collective bargaining power. Our activities include organising psychological counselling, training and even taking up socially relevant programmes such as training Dalit women in IT," he says.

The union also wants to develop guidelines to ensure that unfortunate incidents such as the one which occurred in Bangalore does not recur, adds UNITES general secretary R.Karthik Shekhar.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail