The UN's International Labour Organisation (ILO) said its study of business process outsourcing (BPO) to India, the Philippines, Brazil and Argentina was the first in-depth look at workplaces in the 90-billion-dollar industry.

"On the positive side, and unlike previous assumptions, remote work jobs are of a reasonable good quality by local standards," said senior ILO researcher Jon Messenger.

BPO employees in India, which has the world's biggest share of the outsourcing market, earned nearly double the wages of same-age workers in other sectors of the nation's economy, according to the report.

In the Philippines, BPO employees took home 53 percent more than workers of the same age in other industries.

However Messenger said BPO workers suffered from higher-than-normal stress levels, with the industry driven by pressures to cut costs, and this led to a high rate of staff turnover.

"BPO workers face heavy workloads backed by performance targets combined with tight rules and procedures, all this enforced via electronic monitoring," Messenger said in a video news conference from the ILO's Geneva headquarters.

"This type of high-strain work organisation is well-known to produce high levels of job-related stress."

Among the stress factors, staff typically worked the telephones all night to serve sometimes difficult customers in distant time zones.

Some companies also controlled when workers could rest and take toilet breaks.

In the Philippines, which has the world's second biggest share of the market, staff turnover rates averaged about 30 percent annually, compared with less than 10 percent in other sectors, Messenger said.

In some companies in the four countries studied, turnover could reach 100 percent or more every year, he added.

Work in call centres was generally more stressful, while back office positions, such as in accounting, tended to offer higher quality jobs, the study found.

The ILO called on governments as well as companies to protect the health and safety of BPO staff working at night, and urged call centre operators to redesign work processes so staff enjoyed more autonomy at work.

It described the BPO work force as young, generally well educated and predominantly female except in India.

The ILO did not say how many people worked in the BPO sector. But about 500,000 people work in this sector in the Philippines, according to government data.

earlier related report
Chinese province considers wage negotiation law
Beijing (AFP) July 21, 2010 - Authorities in China's Guangdong province on Wednesday reviewed a draft of the nation's first law on wage negotiations and labour disputes to ease tensions over a spate of strikes, state media said.

The news came as the southern manufacturing hub was hit by yet another stoppage at a factory owned by Japanese firm Omron Corp, a spokesman at the company, which supplies Honda and Toyota with electronic components, said.

"Some 200-300 workers at the Guangzhou (Guangdong's capital) plant started refraining from normal work in the morning," Tsuyoshi Numata told AFP. "These employees are demanding a monthly pay rise of 500 yuan (74 dollars)."

Authorities in Guangdong said one of the main purposes of the revised draft of the law was to establish a legally-binding wage negotiation mechanism, the official Xinhua news agency said.

According to the draft law, unions must organise wage negotiations between elected worker representatives and the employer when more than a fifth of workers demand a pay rise, Xinhua said.

If the employer refuses to hold or join a wage negotiation, the workers are then entitled to stop working and the employer is not allowed to fire them for doing so, the draft reads.

The draft is reportedly the most comprehensive in China, which has been hit by a series of strikes by factory workers over pay and poor conditions.

If successful, the pilot labour dispute settlement mechamism could be rolled out to the rest of the country, Xinhua said.

The recent strikes have mostly hit foreign-invested companies. Omron, for example, has eight plants in China, and the Guangzhou factory where some have started a strike has a total of 800 workers, Numata said.

Another Japanese firm that supplies Honda with parts -- Atsumitec Co -- has also been hit by a work stoppage at one of its plants since July 12.

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