Agreement Signed For ‘Coordinated Free-lance Workers’ In Outsourced Call Centres

By European IR Observatory

In March 2004, Italian trade unions and employers signed a first national agreement regulating 'coordinated freelance contracts' in outsourced call centres.

This is a form of atypical work midway between self-employment and dependent employment. Outsourced call centres are a sector that employs 180,000 people, 10,000 of whom are covered by the agreement. The deal includes a series of rules on the use of coordinated freelance workers and their rights and protection with regard to working time, types of work, vocational training, termination of the work contract, maternity, sickness, end-of-service allowances and minimum pay.

The first national collective agreement regulating workers on 'coordinated freelance contracts' in outsourced call centres was signed on 3 March 2004. The accord was signed on the employers' side by the National Association of Outsourced Call Centre Services (Assocallcenter), affiliated to the General Confederation of Trade, Tourism, Services and Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (Confcommercio).

The trade union signatories were the Italian Federation of Trade, Hotels, Canteen and Services Workers ( Filcams-Cgil), New Work Identities (NIdiL-Cgil), the Italian Federation of Trade, Services and Tourism Workers (Fisascat-Cisl) and the Italian Tourism, Trade and Services Workers Union (UILTuCS-Uil). introduces numerous innovations into the regulations on the use of coordinated freelance workers in outsourced call centres (the rules do not concern in-house call centres, which are covered by the national sectoral agreement applied by the employer concerned). The agreement therefore concerns a form of flexible work which at the legislative level - until the 2003 'Biagi law' on labour market reform - was little protected and regulated. This has encouraged improper use of it, mainly to avoid the costs of employing dependent labour.