“We are by no means closing down the business…,” Narayan Prashad, Director of the NPI Communications Inc., a call centre enterprise, said last week in a statement sent to this newspaper.
According to the statement, the layoffs were as a result of “the loss of a major customer account.” The account, the statement said, was contracted to require service support for two years but the company was later informed “in November that the current economic environment required that they continue to increase efficiency…would be reducing the number of agents on their campaigns and relying on their software to perform a larger percentage of their service needs.”
On February 5, workers of NPIC located at 86 Section A, Block X, Diamond, East Bank Demerara took to protest action after they were abruptly told they were being sent off.
According to the workers they were merely told that they were being let go because the company was closing down.
However in the statement sent to this newspaper, Prashad was quoted as saying, “We were given short notice and yes one of our contracts has come to an abrupt end, which was not in our control, however we are by no means closing down the business.”
According to the statement, NPIC was told by its outsourced contract that advances in their technology has eliminated the need for human support and the contract would be discontinued by the end of March.
“We have numerous customer accounts and multiple projects we are testing, which we expect to add seats on in the near future and hope to move across staff to, as these projects ramp in the coming months,” said Prashad.
He pointed out that affected staff were informed of the move and advised to seek alternative employment and “appropriate severance packages (were provided) to agents impacted”.
According to one affected worker, he has received his severance and one month’s notice. Some 55 workers were laid off and according to Prashad more will be laid off until March. Prashad made these statements the day the workers commenced their protest.
Meanwhile, many of the affected workers who range between 17 to 35 years of age have already sought other jobs. One such worker is Darius Forde. The young man said he had worked at the company for over a year.
On Tuesday, Forde told this newspaper that with the intervention of the Ministry of Labour, workers who were laid off were given two weeks’ severance and notice according to the time they worked for the company.
According to Forde following protest action, he along with several others visited the Labour Ministry and they were informed of their rights. Last week Thursday they received their severance payout.
Prashad also stated that he was working out payments according to the laws set out by the Ministry of Labour.
Convert
“I’m just glad that I got my severance,” said Forde. Forde was a quality control agent at the company. Explaining how a call centre functions, Forde says that they basically convert voicemail messages to text and send it back to the person’s phone as a text message.
Forde explained that the company converts messages from Canada, Australia, the United States and Israel. Working on the Canadian queue Forde said initially he would sign on to the 10am to 6pm shift. The Canadian queue is the largest, Forde said.
According to him, the times you have to work changes every week. “Soon as you get to work you are given an ID and a password,” Forde said. He noted too that before entering the building all cell phones and other belongings such as pens and papers had to be lodged.
According to Prashad this was to ensure confidentiality since it was a sensitive area of work.
Forde said that on a “slow day” some 200 messages will be converted while on a “fast day” close to 600 messages will be converted. He pointed out that he has had to convert messages ranging from weird to deadly.
“I heard one time a guy pull his last breath on the phone,” he said. The man had apparently been shot and was phoning a relative, Forde explained.
He said he felt helpless since there was nothing he could have done.
After two hours in front of a computer, agents are given a fifteen minute break then it’s back to work. After four hours there is the lunch break. There are also two 15-minute breaks, Forde noted. “Sometimes ya eyes go blurred,” said Forde, after having to spend so many hours in front of the computer.
He said that when agents requested that anti-glare screens be set up they were told by management that it was built into the system they were using.
Forde said that he feels that having to stare at a computer all day forced him to start wearing glasses.
Prashad from the outset had declined to comment on the working conditions at the call centre. In his statement he said, “We are very proud of the team of professionals we have employed at NPIC and the reaction to the recent layoffs has been remarkable, with agents working hard and delivering superior service up to their last day.”
