Skip to main contentThese days, you're supposed to be happy just to have a paying job--particularly in Oregon. But employees at Sitel Corp.'s Hillsboro call center aren't following the script, taking their workplace complaints to the state, the courts and the Internet.
The world's approximately 150,000 call centers--referred to by some employees as "high-tech sweatshops"--have never represented the ideal work environment. Employees understand that phone work is "expected to suck," according to James Clark, a former customer-relationship manager at Sitel. "In general, you expect it to be a paycheck job," he says. "But Sitel was the worst of the worst."
Sitel is a Nebraska-based corporation that operates 79 contact centers in 22 countries. The Hillsboro center, which opened in 2000, employs about 700 people in a cavernous building on Bennett Street, one of three Sitel locations nationwide that handle customer-service calls for General Motors. If you own a GM car or are a GM-certified dealer, and you have a question, your customer-service number will probably connect you to a phone in Hillsboro, Tampa or Austin. The Sitel employee on the other end will determine what your problem is and who is best suited to help, which is often the Sitel employee herself.
Sitel denied WW's request to tour the Hillsboro site, but according to current and former employees, the building is filled with rows of long desks; workers sit on both sides of the desks and face each other. Each work area is roughly four feet long and includes a telephone and a computer.
The advantage of the setup is obvious: Sitel can cram upwards of 400 employees into one room and keep them under close supervision. A major downside to the set-up is the health risk: Germs spread easily. Ken Lodge, one of the original team managers, can recall instances where an entire section of seats sat empty only days after one person came down with the flu. At the end of June, the entire building was evacuated after a problem with the ventilation system caused employees to fall sick and led to nine hospitalizations.
The grumbling, though, goes far beyond health concerns. Oregon's Bureau of Labor and Industries' Civil Rights Division has received 12 complaints against Sitel since it became fully functional in the fall of 2000. By comparison, the metro area's three largest call centers--Livebridge, Wells Fargo and Stream International, with a combined workforce five times that of Sitel's Hillsboro site--each drew four complaints each during the same period.
Many of the complaints against Sitel focus on alleged hostile comments from supervisors. Bobbie Adams Lloyd, who is disabled, obese and a lesbian, says she was called a "dyke" and a "gimp," and was told to "get off your fat ass." Tracy Chambers, a black woman, said she was called a "monkey" and a "slave." Several employees reported being fired in retaliation for actions they made to help others.
Only one of the complaints has resulted in a finding in favor of the employee, who accused Sitel of wrongly firing her because of a health problem. Half of the complaints, including Lloyd's, were dismissed for lack of evidence. Of the rest, four, including Chambers', were dropped in favor of pursuing legal action, and one is pending.
Victoria Grandetta, a veteran of the customer-service industry, lasted only a few months at Sitel, where, she says, she felt managers took advantage of timid and fearful employees. She's now organizing a class-action lawsuit. Sitel officials declined to talk about the complaints or the pending legal action, though Scott Lawson, a GM supervisor at the site, said that if he heard about problems on the floor, he would try to address them.
Much of the complaining has now moved online. At the 4-month-old Yahoo! group "Siteller," 200 users, nearly all from the Portland location, mix irate diatribes with serious discussion of the problems employees face.
The discontent at Sitel's Hillsboro outpost surprised Don Van Doren, head of Vanguard Communications, which advises several call-center companies. Van Doren, whose company does not do business with Sitel, says call centers tend to treat employees well. "You want to make sure the employees feel cared about," he says, "because they represent the company on the phone."
Lodge says the high need for jobs may affect the managers' behavior in Hillsboro. "The management's mentality is if the employees don't like the working conditions, they can leave," he says.
WWeek 2015