Management Responses To Unions in Australian Call Centres: Exclude, Tolerate or Embrace?

By Patricia Todd, Joan Eveline, Leonie Still and Judy Skene

Australian unions have identified call centres as an important sector to organise, and this study looks at management attitudes to union activities.

Past research shows the importance of employer recognition of union rights to organise within the workplace as critical to the success of a union campaign.

This article outlines management stance towards unions within a sample of Western Australian call centres, detailing the forms their cooperation and resistance take. It explores the link between management's control strategies and their attitudes towards unions and, finally, identifies several factors influencing management's stance towards unions.

(Australian Bulletin of Labour. vol. 29, no. 2, June 2003)