Barrow call centre staff angry as bosses renege on pay deal
Last updated at 11:08, Monday, 09 February 2009
CALL centre workers in Barrow say they are angry after an expected upgrading pay rise was cancelled.
Around 300 people work at the Lake House contact centre in Phoenix Road, Barrow, for Liberata.
The staff, many of whom earn around £12,500 a year, were expecting rises to follow a big pay review that could have given an additional £1,000 a year on top of normal pay increases to even up Barrow pay with other centres.
But last week Liberata told staff that it was not implementing the pay review awards, which would have been backdated to last June, because of harder times and uncertainty over contracts.
It means workers at the site will lose between £500 and £1,000 of extra performance pay recommended in a study they expected on top of the normal annual pay rise.
The company told a mass meeting of Lake House workers that they will instead get an annual cost of living increase of 2.4 per cent from February. Some workers also said they were unhappy with the Unison trades union which worked on the pay review scheme with Liberate bosses.
One upset worker who contacted the Mail said: “Basically they are saying they can’t afford it. They said the company had made a loss over the last financial year and would make one this financial year and hoped to turn around in the year 2009/2010.”
He said some workers at the call centre were disappointed with Unison and felt it was not doing enough.
Liberata has seen rapid growth but has had a bumpy time recently, including having a Government school pupil grants programme taken off it because of big delays.
Another angry Barrow workers said: “A meeting was called to tell us that we’re not getting the annual pay rise we were promised, back paid to June 2008. They have now decided that they will give us a miserly 2.45 per cent increase from February 2009, in most cases this is between £300-£400 a year after tax, a £21 a month pay rise. The office was in uproar.”
Liberata is a national “outsourcing” company which takes on contracts offloaded by public authorities, such as sending out and getting in the council tax bills for Barrow Borough Council. No Liberata spokesman was available to comment.
First published at 13:21, Tuesday, 27 January 2009
Published by http://www.nwemail.co.uk
JE, Many of us are earning a poor salary BUT there are some very well paid individuals in Lake House. Were they red circled???? NO - Local Management made sure of that. Unethical again - Come on UNISON!
No wonder JE has not balanced out, High salaries stay High and Low paid workers stay at the bottom.AnonView all 68 comments on this article
Have your say
I WORK AT LIBERATA AND WHEN I STARTED WORKING HERE IT WAS THE PLACE TO WORK ADN IT WAS HARD TO GET A JOB AT LIBERTA BUT NOW PEOPLE JUST DONT WANT TO WORK HERE!!
THERE TRET US SO BAD! I AM ONE OF THE LEVEL ONE ASSESSORS PAID JUST £12500 A YEAR AND AFTER MY BILLS AND RENT ETC I DONT HAVE ANYTHING LEFT, I WOULD REALLY LOVE TO SAVE AND BUY MY OWN HOME, BUT THIS IS JUST NOT POSSIBLE. I ALWAYS THOUGHT THAT YOU WORKED FOR A BETTER LIFE BUT THATS NOT THE FOR WORKERS AT LIBERATA!
Posted by John-LEVEL 1 on 7 February 2009 at 08:26