Canadian Occupational Safety

16 Canadian Occupational Safety www.cos-mag.com By Amanda Silliker M ichelle Ravary was helping a customer fi gure out a problem with his cellphone bill when the call took an unpleasant turn. The customer said he just had a "wet dream" and needed help "fi nishing off." "He called me and when I was deal- ing with his bill, he started pleasuring himself and it was totally disgusting," she says. "I tried to redirect the focus back to the bill and kind of ignore what he had said… but he would just keep going and kept saying stuff like 'What are you wearing?' and 'What do you look like?'" As per company policy, Ravary had to give the customer three warnings before she could terminate the call. She told him twice that this was not professional and that she would not continue the conversation if he kept talking to her in this manner. "I would say it and he would keep going and I would keep talking about bills," she says. "He just ended up telling me to go fuck myself and then disconnected." To address the abuse that call centre workers face, Ravary's union, the United Steelworkers (USW), launched the Hang Up on Abuse campaign in December. Verbally abusive custom- ers are a serious risk to the mental and physical health of call centre employees and the USW is calling on employers to provide them with better protection. The USW estimates there are about 175,000 call centre workers across the country; 10,000 of which USW represents. The campaign is a direct response to the high volume of calls USW has received from its members about abu- sive callers. "It has become a very, very serious issue. It is a situation across the coun- try that needs to be dealt with," says USW national director Ken Neumann. "Since we launched this campaign, it has been overwhelming in regards to data and evidence that is coming in." Call centre workers can be sub- jected to all kinds of abuse, the most common being verbal abuse, such as profuse swearing and misogynistic, racist and homophobic comments. In one instance, Neumann recalls a caller said to a worker "I curse the woman that gave birth to you," and the worker had just lost her mother two weeks prior to the call. A gay call centre worker told the USW he has been called a "fucking faggot" multiple times. He is also yelled and sworn at on a daily basis. Ravary, who works in Toronto, has been repeatedly told to "Put a man on the phone" and she is regularly belittled and called names. "They will tell you that you're stupid and you're an idiot. It's pretty terrible. They'll say anything to you. It's amaz- ing. It's amazing what people will say to somebody else," she says. Call centre workers also experi- ence physical threats, including death threats. One worker, who wrote in to the USW, had a caller tell him there was a rifl e being aimed at his head through the window. Sexual harassment, like what Ravary had experienced, is also an occupa- tional hazard. Michelle Dey, a call centre employee in Vancouver, had a caller ask what colour panties she was wearing, and another made it clear he was performing lewd acts in a hot tub while talking to her. This type of abuse affects call centre workers in a variety of ways, such as negatively impacting their home life, says Neumann. "People get up in the morning to go to work and do a good job and have pride in the work they do and fend for their families, but to basically go to work and witness this abuse and torment, there's no doubt workers would take that home and it has an effect on their kids and their partners. That's not the society we should condone," he says. This line of work can affect workers' mental health. Ravary now requires higher doses of medication for anxiety and depression after working in call centres for 16 years. "After a while it just doesn't bounce off you anymore. You really start taking it to heart and it just makes you feel terrible and awful all the time," she says. The stress of experiencing this type of harassment also has physical conse- quences such as poor sleep and eating habits, says Neumann. According to the Hang Up on Abuse website, one worker was so stressed on the job and experienced so much anxiety that they developed an eye condition called central serous retinopathy, which causes temporary visual impairment in one eye. And the abuse has negative consequences for employers too because workers cannot perform their jobs properly. It's very diffi cult for employees to move on to another call after experiencing abuse and harassment, and it affects them for the rest of the day. "You don't want to go back on the phone. You don't want to talk to anyone else. You just want to say 'OK, I'm done' and I just want to walk away and I just don't want to do this," Ravar y says. "It really makes you shut down." But not all call centre workers expe- rience abuse and harassment. Rebecca Cable has been working at Admiral Insurance for 20 years and was very surprised when she heard about the USW campaign. "We of course get disgruntled, unhappy customers at times, but from an abuse point of view, they are rare," says Cable, renewals department man- ager at the 450-employee company in Halifax that provides support for the Admiral's three million customers in the United Kingdom. "It's not a huge issue for our company." Giving call centre workers the right to hang up on abusive calls is the top recommendation of the USW's Hang Up on Abuse campaign. At Admiral, employees are allowed to terminate a call, but they still need to give one warning. Another option is just to transfer the call to a manager who then has the ability to terminate the call. "All we ask is our staff make the judgment. There's no set rule in place as to what they have to deem as abu- sive or too much to take; it's what that individual feels is too much to take," says Cable. If an employee does terminate the call, he is required to tell his immedi- ate manager right away so notes can be made on the account to protect the next staff member who may speak with that customer. Ideally, the man- ager will call the customer and handle it herself, says Cable. While they did not agree to an inter- view, Andrew Garas, manager, media relations at Rogers Communications, says in an email that Rogers has "zero tolerance for abuse" directed at any of its employees. "Our customer care team is empow- ered to end a call if they feel threatened or the caller is acting inappropriately, which happens rarely," he says. Rogers call centre workers are required to engage a team manager and provide warnings if they feel threatened before ending a call. Bell also did not agree to an inter- view, but its spokesperson, Jacqueline Employers should allow workers to hang up on abusive callers, deny repeat abusers service, says union That's not the society we should That's not the society we should This line of work can affect workers' This line of work can affect workers' mental health. Ravary now requires mental health. Ravary now requires higher doses of medication for anxiety higher doses of medication for anxiety and depression after working in call "After a while it just doesn't bounce off you anymore. You really start taking it to heart and it just makes you feel terrible and awful all the time," The stress of experiencing this type of harassment also has physical conse- quences such as poor sleep and eating habits, says Neumann. According to the Hang Up on Abuse website, one worker was so stressed on the job and experienced so much anxiety that they developed an eye condition called central serous retinopathy, which causes temporary visual impairment And the abuse has negative the United Kingdom. "It's not a huge issue for our company." Giving call centre workers the right to hang up on abusive calls is the top recommendation of the USW's Hang Up on Abuse campaign. At Admiral, employees are allowed to terminate a call, but they still need to give one warning. Another option is just to transfer the call to a manager who then has the ability to terminate the call. "All we ask is our staff make the judgment. There's no set rule in place as to what they have to deem as abu- Employers should allow workers to hang up on Employers should allow workers to hang up on abusive callers, deny repeat abusers service, says union abusive callers, deny repeat abusers service, says union abusive callers, deny repeat abusers service, says union

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