By Ron Coates, 3 June 2003 15:12
NEWS Up to 200,000 jobs could be lost to offshore call centres according to communications union CWU, which yesterday voted unanimously to stop the drain. Fresh from its partial victory over BT's outsourcing plans, the union is joining two others, Amicus and Unify, to mount a public campaign and to lobby against this danger to "jobs and the economy". Chris Proctor, CWU spokesman, said: "We've been losing heavy industry over decades. It's now all supposed to be service industry-based. If that goes, there will be nothing left." During the short debate at the union's conference, speakers also complained that the practices of offshore call centres 'attacked the dignity and identity' of workers by making them pretend to be from various parts of the North of England or Scotland. Earlier this year the union opposed BT plans to open a 2,000-strong customer services centre in Bangalore, India. The CWU and BT agreed a compromise which safeguarded existing jobs in the UK.
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