Agreement reached between BSNLEU and the Management, on the issue of outsourcing Customer Service Centre activities.

Based on the strong opposition conveyed to the BSNL Management, by BSNLEU, in the matter of outsourcing the activities of Customer Service Centres, a discussion took place today between the Management and BSNLEU. Com. P. Abhimanyu, GS and com. Swapan Chakraborty, Dy.GS, represented BSNLEU. Shri N.K. Mehta, Director (EB), who is holding additional charge as Director (CFA) and shri Anil Jain, CGM NC NGN, represented the Management. BSNLEU expressed it’s protest for taking such a serious decision, without consulting the Recognised Union. They also expressed their concern that, the proposed outsourcing of CSC activities would render a large number of employees surplus. Further, they strongly demanded that the Management should give up the proposal of outsourcing and should make fresh recruitment of staff to face the shortage. From the Management Side, it was replied that there was urgent need to upgrade the ambience of the Customer Service Centres, at par with that of the private telecom companies. They also justified the outsourcing by stating that the employees are retiring at a very fast phase and told that sufficient staff was not available in many places to man the Customer Service Centres. After prolonged discussion, the following understanding is reached.

(1)  Management will keep under abeyance it’s decision to outsource Customer Service Centre activities throughout the country.

(2)  To experiment it’s decision of outsourcing, the Management will outsource three customer service centres in each of the four zones.

(3)  Meanwhile Management will collect the data about the total number of employees working in all the customer service centres throughout the country and their age profile.

Further talks will take place between the Union and the Management, based on the data collected as mentioned in para (3) above.