Management responses to unions in Australian call centres: Exclude, tolerate or embrace?

Abstract

"This paper reports on a study of management’s attitudes and responses to union activities in 20 call centres in Western Australia. Australian unions have identified call centres as an important sector to organise, but past research has acknowledged the importance of employer recognition of union rights to organise within the workplace as critical to the success of a union campaign. In addition, there is now substantial literature illustrating call centres as high control workplaces, and therefore difficult sites for unions to organise, although the question as to what extent these high control strategies reflect management’s attitude towards union organisation in call centres has been much less addressed. This article outlines management's stance towards unions within the sample of Western Australian call centres, detailing the forms their co-operation and resistance take. It explores the link between management's control strategies and their attitudes towards unions and, finally, identifies several factors influencing management's stance towards unions."