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During the coronavirus pandemic, call center workers in the Philippines who are contractors for Amazon’s Ring home security division are required to report to the office.
At first, employees said they had no choice but to sleep at work so they could answer calls from Amazon Ring customers in US time zones. The conditions prompted an investigation by Amazon after images of employees on mattresses and blankets on the floor were made public in news reports. So the contractor, Paris-based Teleperformance, committed to making improvements.
But six months after the original complaints surfaced and Teleperformance promised to make changes, four workers at Amazon’s call center in Cebu City, the Philippines, who shared their stories with NBC News, said their working conditions have only worsened. The workers asked to remain anonymous because they fear losing their jobs and being forced to pay fines for breaching confidentiality agreements equal to two years of their annual salary.
In recent months, Teleperformance, which also provides customer support for many other large companies, including Netflix, stopped allowing people who work for Amazon Ring to sleep on the floor. But the company, which generated 5.4 billion euros in revenue in 2019, did not provide any alternative accommodation, workers said.
Some employees said they rent shared rooms nearby that cost about 20 percent of their salaries or that they sleep with colleagues. Those who cannot find nearby accommodation or who can no longer access public transport to work have tried using the infrequent transfers offered by the company. But the shuttles sometimes take several hours to arrive, workers said, delivering them home exhausted when their shifts are over. When they arrive at work, employees said, they feel scared to work busy shifts when social distancing isn’t possible and workstations aren’t properly sanitized.
Working conditions have increased fear of Covid-19 among employees, who estimate that tens of hundreds of workers have developed flu-like symptoms. But they said applications to work from home have been denied.
“People are scared because we don’t know who has it and who doesn’t,” said an Amazon Ring contractor. “But people have no other choice, because either you will be infected or you will starve.”
Mike Lytle, director of operations for Teleperformance Philippines, said that if workers are ill with flu-like symptoms, they are sent home and asked to see a doctor. The company offers workers health insurance to cover hospitalizations related to Covid-19 and communicates with sick employees regularly to “check their well-being.”
The BPO Industry Employees Network, an organization of workers for what are called business process outsourcing workers in the Philippines, has been highlighting the Covid-19 outbreaks in call centers across the country and advocating for worker safety since the start of the pandemic. The group has been calling on the industry to allow staff members to work from home or provide accommodation near the site, door-to-door transportation, free coronavirus tests and medical care. He has also been calling for a ban on sharing headsets in call centers during the pandemic and for hazard pay for working in dangerous conditions.
But unlike other Teleperformance customers, Amazon Ring doesn’t allow its Philippines-based call center staff members to work from home.
Lytle said in an email that “the safety and well-being of our employees will always be the highest priority.”
Still, Emma Daniels, a spokeswoman for Amazon Ring, said the company would not change its work-from-home policy.
“Ring does not allow customer service contractors in the Philippines to work from home to ensure the security and privacy of our customers’ data,” he said, although workers note that they cannot access confidential information anyway without the consent of the customer. client.
Vital Jobs
The conditions for Amazon Ring workers highlight how many tech companies have embraced outsourced labor to provide a human touch to their rigs, often in places where labor protections are lax and wages are low.
Call centers and other outsourced business operations are critical to the Philippine economy. They are estimated to account for 9 percent of its gross domestic product and 1.2 million jobs.
So when the county was closed in March, only a few professions were exempted from home quarantine, including police, healthcare workers, and contract workers.
From March to April, hundreds of Amazon Ring workers slept and worked in what they described in an open letter obtained by NBC News as “inhuman” conditions. The sleeping conditions were previously reported by the Financial Times in April, and Amazon said it would investigate the situation. Amazon told NBC News that it conducted audits of the facility in April to ensure proper sanitation, protective gear and social distancing. “We are urgently investigating these new allegations and are addressing them with Teleperformance at the highest level,” said a company spokeswoman in response to allegations made by workers interviewed for this story.
The company declined to provide further details.
After photos of the cramped and harrowing conditions of the workers living in the call center were released, the Amazon Ring and Teleperformance operations were widely criticized and the photos were sent to the Philippine Department of Labor and Employment. whereupon Teleperformance stopped providing sleeping arrangements in the office.
While Teleperformance offered transportation for its workers, the company required some passengers to wait in the office for hours after their shifts or to walk miles to get to a pickup point at odd hours. One worker described walking 45 minutes from home to catch the last shuttle to work at 8:10 p.m. M. For a night shift that doesn’t start until 2 a.m. M. Your shift ends at 11 a.m. M. t until 4:30 pm, leaving only a few hours to sleep before taking the next shuttle to work.
“If you are the breadwinner, you need the money,” said the worker.
Teleperformance said it has significantly increased its transportation service for workers in Cebu since the pandemic began. He also said he was helping employees find off-site accommodation.
Even with Amazon’s request for changes, all four workers who were interviewed said Teleperformance has not been sanitizing workstations and shared computers between shifts. Cleaning staff members clean the tables periodically, but only with a bucket of water and a towel. Social distancing is possible only on less busy shifts, they said. But that doesn’t happen during the busy parts of the night, when shifts overlap.
Teleperformance questioned the workers’ allegations. The company said its offices are only half full to allow for social distancing and that it provides masks and face shields to all employees. Teleperformance added that employee workstations are cleaned twice a day.
Sick workers
But workers and management seem to agree that Amazon Ring workers have been falling ill in recent months. Three of the workers said dozens of people in the office, which houses several hundred workers, had recently been ill. That included a team of about 15 people who were sick in late May and early June and were sent home to quarantine without pay. One of the team leaders, who was diagnosed with Covid-19, spent about a month in the hospital, two of the workers said. The Amazon Ring call center site manager, who was 40, died during the pandemic, workers said, and they were not told why.
“That caused panic,” said one worker, who was absent in June for fear of contracting the virus. “He was always walking on the ground and he looked very healthy.”
The worker said that many employees were developing a cough. But they were afraid to go to the doctor, because if they were found to have Covid-19, they would be sent home without pay for two weeks.
“We have no other choice,” said one worker. “If we don’t work, we will starve.”
Teleperformance’s Lytle said the company could not discuss details about the manager who died, but added that “our hearts go out to any member of the Teleperformance family that we have lost.”
He said the other employees who were sick were sent home and had medical insurance to cover hospital stays. “Employees were contacted regularly to check on their well-being,” he said.
He said the company conducts daily checks with all of its employees and asks them to go home if they experience symptoms similar to the coronavirus. The company said it offers paid time off, depending on tenure, “above industry standards in the Philippines,” that employees can use if they are ill. Teleperformance confirmed that it does not offer additional sick pay to workers who show symptoms and need to stay home until quarantine.
Increasing consequences
The Amazon Ring contractors at Teleperformance took a huge risk talking about their working conditions due to a nondisclosure agreement in their employment contract: if they violate the confidentiality clause, they could face a fine equal to approximately two years’ salary, according to a copy of the contract seen by NBC News.
The contract showed that customer service workers earn 21,500 Philippine pesos a month, which is equivalent to about $ 444. The “compensation for damages and losses” for breach of the confidentiality agreement is 500,000 pesos.
Lytle said the confidentiality agreement was “standard business practice” and that the company had established an internal hotline for workers to report their concerns about Covid-19 safety without fear of retaliation.
When NBC News notified Daniels, the Amazon Ring spokeswoman, of the conditions, she said: “We are investigating this allegation. This and other forms of retaliation against workers is a violation of our Code of Conduct and will not be tolerated.”
