Union recruits Inland Revenue contractors
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.
National secretary Kerry Davies said about 160 of the workers have 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 refunds and bills that will result from the next stage of its $1.6 billion Business Transformation project.
But Davies said the union believes Inland Revenue should have employed the workers as IRD staff on fixed-term contracts, given it knew how long they would be needed.
‘‘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 are based at Inland Revenue offices, sitting alongside the department’s 900 call centres employees, and are 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 are 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 is comfortable with the arrangement it has with Madison ‘‘and is satisfied with the experience Madison staff are having supporting us through a period of peak demand’’.
Madison has not put any obstacles in front of the PSA’S recruitment drive and has 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 said 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.’’