Public Service Association recruits outsourced call centre workers, saying they should be IRD staff

Friday, 15 March 2019

The Public Service Association has launched a recruitment drive among 325 outsourced call centre workers that Inland Revenue contracted in from private-sector company Madison Recruitment.

Inland Revenue has used call centre contractors before, and has taken on 325 to cover a glut of calls that it expects from tax changes this year.

National secretary Kerry Davies said that about 160 of the workers had joined the union 'and that is growing every day'.

Inland Revenue drafted in the contractors in November for up to a year to help handle a flood of queries that it expects from taxpayers about automatic and refunds and bills that will result from the next stage of its $1.6 billion Business Transformation project.

But Davies said the union believed Inland Revenue should have employed the workers as IRD staff on fixed-term contracts, given it knew how long they would be needed.

* IRD to spend almost $4m to explain 'biggest tax change in a generation'

PSA national secretary Kerry Davies says call centre contractors are sitting next to IRD staff doing the same work but are being paid less.

* Inland Revenue asked to 'check again' by Revenue Minister Stuart Nash

* Inland Revenue contact centre workers thought contracts were 'a joke'**

'It is not like they are temps covering for someone who is off sick and it is a genuine casual appointment. This is for specific pieces of work for significant periods of time,' she said.

Davies said its goal was to have the workers covered by a collective agreement, 'ideally extending the conditions of the IRD collective agreement out to them'.

The Madison contractors were based at Inland Revenue offices, sitting alongside the department's 900 call centres employees, and were doing essentially the same work as them but on lower pay, she said.

'We believe if they are doing the same work, they should be getting the same pay, and given the same protections.'

Inland Revenue claimed the workers were not doing the 'full range' of work carried out by its permanent staff but the union rejected that, she said.

Inland Revenue spokesman Baden Campbell responded that it was comfortable with the arrangement it had with Madison 'and is satisfied with the experience Madison staff are having supporting us through a period of peak demand'.

Madison had not put any obstacles in front of the PSA's recruitment drive and had responded as a responsible employer, Davies said.

The PSA changed its rules in September to allow it to recruit independent contractors, explaining it was concerned that its members' working conditions were not undermined by inferior terms offered to contractors driving down working conditions and pay.

'As a future focused union the PSA is open to working with all new forms of work,' the union explained then.

'If we're going to extend our influence in order to be part of shaping future changes within the world of work, we know that it is important for us to gain information about, and build and maintain relationships with those affected by new forms of work.'