The Moroccan Federation of Call Center Staff and Offshoring Trades has launched an alert on the working conditions of outsourced customer services staff in Morocco and Tunisia during this period of health crisis caused by the Covid pandemic. 19. Although the outsourcing of call center work by multinationals offers enormous employment potential, the industry has been criticized for its poor and abusive working conditions, laid bare in the context of the pandemic.
The federation calls into question the long working hours, the precarious conditions in which the workers evolve and the lack of adequate protection during the first months of the pandemic. All causes that expose workers to the coronavirus.
For the structure, the management of the call centers consciously ignored the possibility of teleworking, claiming to need workers on site to meet the demands of customers of the technology giant. “Call centers in Tunisia and Morocco continued to provide essential services throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, as existing risks from economic hardship and psychological stress worsened and new risks worsened for health have left more than 100,000 workers even more exposed ”, indicates the press release of the federation. Added to this is the lack of representation within these companies.
In Tunisia and Morocco, only large foreign call center companies generally have union representation and active assemblies of workers and employers. According to Ayoub Douad, Secretary General of the National Federation of Employees and Executives of Call Centers and Outsourcing Companies, more than 80% of the sector in Morocco is not affiliated with any union. This lack of representation is worrying, as it prevents workers from making their voices heard, negotiating better working conditions and filing complaints in cases of abuse. At the same time, call center companies have said they have taken important steps to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
