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The work of the future >> Call-centre agents will be the jobs of the millennium. But with downward pressure on wages, the millennium doesn't look so bright by PHILIP PREVILLE
"This is a booming industry," says Donna Léveillé, 37, who spoke with the Mirror along with five of her fellow students in a pre-arranged interview. "We'll get to choose the place where we want to work." The consensus in the room was as optimistic as it gets: the starting salaries aren't bad, the good employers provide benefits, the call-centre industry is growing rapidly and there's no end in sight to the growth. There was a rapid, happy buzz in the room. The students' enthusiasm was dampened only once. When informed that, according to a Web site designed to entice foreign companies to relocate their call centres here, Quebec's "call centre agents earn 25 per cent less on average than those in the United States," the room went silent. Cheap labour aplenty In all fairness, the Dawson students probably have reason to be optimistic. Their nine-month training program, which includes courses in telephone sales and collections, computer software, scriptwriting and basic management techniques, will give them an edge in the hunt for the industry's best jobs, including supervisory and middle-management positions. And the program is entirely government-paid, so they graduate without any student debt. But the come-hither Web site tells a different story about the call-centre industry as a whole. Maintained by Vision Québec, a privately owned corporation whose mission is to solicit American call-centre companies and sing the praises of doing business here, the Web site (www.visionquebec.com) paints a picture of Quebec as an ideal call-centre location--thanks to our province's combination of cheap labour and massive government subsidies. In addition to vaunting Quebec's lower wages, the site also claims that employee benefit packages cost between 4 per cent and 7 per cent less here than in the U.S. The site even spins Quebec's high unemployment rate into a winning condition for business. "Another component of today's optimal workforce is availability," the site reads. "Quebec has a workforce of 3.5 million people of which 419,700 are unemployed." In other words, with so many people looking for work, labour costs will stay cheap. Which explains why, even when six companies are bidding for the Dawson students, they don't feel any pressure to raise their salaries--it's still easy to find someone else to fill the position. The Vision Québec site also vaunts provincial government subsidies (often up to $6,000 or more for each new job created), as well as generous tax credits on specialized equipment. Though not a government organization, Vision Québec was created at the government's request in 1997 by Bell Canada, Caisse Desjardins and two other partners. The company is unique in North America: whereas other governments use their civil servants to attract call-centre jobs (New Brunswick comes to mind), Quebec contracts out that task to Vision Québec. Vision Québec makes its money by encouraging American companies to relocate, and offering them "relocation" consulting services: finding their office space, purchasing their equipment, hiring their staff. The province then pays Vision Québec an undisclosed "finder's fee" for every new job they help create. "We're not targeting fly-by-night companies," says Brigitte Simard, Vision Québec's vice-president of sales and marketing. "We target major corporations, reputable companies that will create permanent jobs. That is our mandate." Vision Québec has helped create 3,000 new jobs since its creation 20 months ago, enticing companies such as Air France, Federal Express and Insight Computers to Montreal. Off welfare, on the phone While Vision Québec is in it for the money, the provincial government is not--they're literally throwing money at companies willing to set up shop in Quebec. Their subsidies often tally in the millions of dollars. (Last September, the province contributed subsidies totalling $10 million for the creation of 1,500 new call-centre jobs, while the three companies creating the jobs invested only $18 million.) Rather, the government's interest lies in creating new jobs for people with little education and poor job prospects. Says Roger Allard of the government agency Emploi Québec: "We commissioned a study of call centres and discovered that, for about half of all the jobs, all you need is a high-school diploma, a bit of experience in the service sector and some knowledge of a second language." The way the government sees it, call-centre agents are the unskilled labourers of the new millennium. Call centres will take people off the welfare rolls and turn them into taxpayers. There are currently about 40,000 call-centre jobs in Quebec, mostly in Montreal--everything from telemarketing to customer support to telephone pollsters. That number is expected to grow by as much as 10,000 more jobs in 1999. Learning lessons from Bell But if call centres will be the employers of the masses in the years to come, what kind of a living will the masses make? When both Vision Québec and the provincial government are creating jobs and getting people off welfare, it's cause for celebration. But when they create those jobs by promoting the province as a cut-rate place to do business on the cheap, it's also cause for concern. That concern came to the fore last week, when Bell Canada announced it would transfer the agents from one of its call centres--namely its directory assistance operators--to a new company created in partnership with Arizona-based Excell Global Services Inc. In the process, the agents' salaries may be slashed by up to 40 per cent--from $34,500 per year ($19 an hour) to $22,000 per year ($12 an hour), on average. Can anyone earn a living wage as a call-centre agent? Emploi Québec's Allard defends the government's decision to promote the call-centre industry. "Starting pay for these jobs averages between $12 and $15 an hour," he notes. "That's more or less double the minimum wage. Walk into any schoolyard at the end of June and offer graduates $12 an hour. You'll be a pretty popular guy." "Not for very long," replies Gary Cwitco, spokesperson for the Communications Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada, which represents Bell's operators. "$22,000 a year does not allow you to live an enjoyable life, to raise a family." Allard disagrees. "The average industrial salary is around $26,000. These jobs are entry-level positions, and they're good paying ones." Allard also points out that call-centre agents gain experience in customer service and in using computers--valuable skills that can serve them well in the future. Cwitco, however, says computers are part of the problem. "Over the years, Bell's operators gained many skills--but the company turned those skills over to the computer. Clearly, Bell wanted to devalue the operators' work. "With Bell, this kind of job used to be a career. Now those days are just about over."
(sidebar: Confessions of a telemarketing scammer) |
The students enrolled in the Call Centre Agent training program at Dawson College feel like they're on top of the world. In an economy where steady jobs have been notoriously hard to find, they have chosen to earn their living with a dial pad and a headset--and they're getting ready to accept offers from at least half a dozen employers.