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We come together as unions representing ICTS and contact centre employees around the world to jointly state our commitment to ensure that Teleperformance respects human and labour rights across its global operations.
Teleperformance is the largest contact centre company in the world, operating in 76 countries and employing more than 280,000 workers.
As members of UNI ICTS we have been working together for several years to resolve issues with Teleperformance, with some success in individual countries. As a result of our efforts over a nearly two-year period, workers in the Dominican Republic finally achieved the right to organise without fear and employer interference. This represents an important victory, yet it does not solve the systematic problems that are evident across Teleperformance’s many workplaces.
Teleperformance workers in several other countries confront workplace problems and employer re-sistance when they seek to come together in unions to correct them. In countries such as Mexico, the Philippines, Colombia and the United States workers have expressed extreme fear of retaliation for even speaking up about workplace problems like forced overtime, unpaid work, and sexual harass-ment, among others.
Teleperformance has not embraced a companywide approach to ensure that its worksites around the world are free from human rights violations. Under the new French due diligence law, the company is required to publish a due diligence plan to identify the risk of human rights violations in its operations globally, take active steps to address these risks, and adopt an alert mechanism with French unions. To date it has not demonstrated compliance with these obligations.
Recently, the company has indicated that it will not sign a global agreement with UNI to ensure com-pliance with fundamental human and labour rights in a systematic way.
In the absence of good faith efforts to resolve the issues identified above, we support and commit to a plan which holds Teleperformance accountable for violations of human rights in its operations. Specif-ically, we agree to:
- Call upon the French government to enforce the French due diligence law and ensure that Teleperformance takes steps to reduce its risk of committing human rights violations in its global operations.
- Hold Teleperformance to the standards adopted for multinational corporations at the ILO, OECD and UN regarding international human rights
- Call upon government officials, NGOs, businesses, investors and other stakeholders, to as-sist in enforcing these standards.
- Where necessary, draw public attention to the conduct of Teleperformance in France and other countries in which it does business.
Any and all actions described above will be undertaken for the purpose of ensuring that human rights are honoured throughout the Teleperformance operations and for the purpose of reaching a global agreement with Teleperformance so that all its workers are treated with justice and dignity.
Adopted this 12th day of October 2018.
