Philippines call centre on agenda

Air NZ is considering relocating a call centre service from Auckland to the Philippines, a union says.

E tu¯ union aviation spokesman Savage said the airline was looking at outsourcing its ‘‘overflow contact centre’’ from Concentrix in Auckland to the Philippines.

Concentrix is an international call centre company operating in more than 40 countries and has a presence in 15 cities in the Philippines.

An Air NZ spokesman said a final decision had not been made and no Air NZ employees would be affected.

‘‘Air NZ is working with our current long-term outsource partner to assess the future location of the contact centre work they conduct on behalf of Air NZ,’’ the spokesman said.

Regardless of the final decision, Air NZ would retain its New Zealandbased contact centre function, he said.

Concentrix New Zealand general manager Tim Roberts would not say whether Concentrix staff would lose their jobs if Air NZ moved its business overseas. ‘‘We support a number of clients in New Zealand and do not see significant impact to our people in the foreseeable future.’’

Last year Air NZ’s executive team began looking at every area of the business for cost savings in order to offset rising jet fuel prices and to reduce overhead costs by about 5 per cent as planned network growth was expected to reduce from 5-7 per cent on average over the next three years to 3-5 per cent. Cost saving measures included deferring the purchase of new aircraft and the executive team voluntarily freezing their salaries for at least 12 months.