“I chose to be a telemarketer to escape unemployment instead of wasting time and waiting at home for a miracle to happen,” she said. Khalfallah’s new job at the Maghreb Call Center (M2C) in Tunisia’s capital has opened a window on the future for the 26-year-old, who had been unable to find work despite holding a degree in finance and a master’s in quality management.
#CALLCENTER TUNIS FREE#
This is not my style,” said the non-striking employee.TUNIS, 8 June 2006 - Seated before a computer screen in a small, busy room in North Africa, Fatma Khalfallah asks the Frenchman at the other end of the telephone line whether he would like to receive a free catalog of frozen meals. “It is blackmail in the revolutionary style: we threaten in order to get what we want. However, the headquarters in Paris issued a statement insisting workers’ salaries in Tunisia had risen, by five percent in 2012 and six percent in 2013, claims categorically denied by the striking staff.ĭiscontent is rife in parts of Tunisia, whose economy has struggled to pull itself out of the recession that followed Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s ouster in the January 2011 uprising, with unemployment pegged at about 17 percent.įor some employees at Teleperformance, however, it is the ongoing strikes themselves that are undermining businesses and preventing recovery. Since the start of the strike on Monday, the company’s Tunisian branch has declined repeated AFP requests for comment on the accusations. “The reasons for their dismissals were fabricated and they realized it, and that led to the demands over wages and working conditions,” said Galepides. In a bid to reverse the decision, three unionists locked themselves in a meeting room at the company’s headquarters, and have yet to come out pending a resolution of the dispute. The union’s secretary general, Nicolas Galepides, says Teleperformance’s directors have badly managed a dispute that has been rumbling for months.Īt the end of February, after a disciplinary committee meeting, half a dozen employees were fired. “This company behaves everywhere like gangsters and thugs,” shouted Frederic Madelin, one of the French strikers, to cheers from the crowd.
They were sharply critical of Teleperformance, which says it operates in 49 countries, boasts over 135,000 employees worldwide, including more than 6,000 in Tunisia, and generated almost 3.0 billion dollars in revenues in 2011.
Members of France’s SUD-PTT trade union, visiting the North African country to take part in last week’s World Social Forum, turned out on Tuesday to support their Tunisian colleagues. The doctors told me not to work for five days,” he added, showing the doctor’s note. “They punched me in the face and hurt my wrist. Sami Houli, a union representative of Teleperformance Tunis, reckoned the three-day strike to demand better wages and working conditions, which began on Monday, had virtually paralyzed four call centers, with the two others working normally.Įmployed at the Charguia center, in another Tunis suburb, Houli said the firm refused to negotiate and claimed he was attacked by three officials on Tuesday morning. “We are venting our bitterness at being exploited in our own country for 450 dinars (225 euros) while they earn billions from our efforts,” lamented the mother of two, saying she has been unable to pay for an urgent thyroid operation. Only half of us are paid bonuses, and we don’t have medical insurance," said Mouna Chartani, employed at the Ben Arous center in a suburb of Tunis since 2007.
“Normally our salaries should have risen. “No to repression,” “2003 salary = 2013 salary” and “Stop discrimination” read the slogans brandished on placards by company “advisers,” who handle calls from French or Canadian clients of phone operators Orange, SFR, Bell Canada and Free. Strikes and social unrest have hampered development in the country, amid disappointment at the government’s failure to improve living conditions more than two years after the revolution, which was fuelled by similar grievances.
Bonuses slashed, bullying, forced transfers - Tunisian employees of Teleperformance angrily accused the French call center giant of such practices during a strike over poor working conditions in Tunis.