Australian labour interest groups are confident that union representation in the IT and telecommunications industries will grow, but acknowledges that job-shedding throughout its sectors is eroding membership numbers.

Some groups believe that penetrating the industry is vital to establishing white-collar unionism in Australia, but say that culture and structural qualities of its work places resist efforts to promote collective labour activity.

"In an industry that has a strong individual culture people are starting to recognise that they still have a collective interest," said Michael Gadier, spokesperson for the IT Workers Alliance (ITWA). "That's been highlighted in the wake of the IT bust."

The ITWA, established late last year by the NSW Labour Council to provide an online forum for IT worker issues, has identified two of the group's key grievances: excessive skimming of IT salaries by recruitment agencies and email privacy.

Gadier believes that IT workers are becoming more receptive to the notion of collective action because of bitter experiences with the recent industry shakeout in which tens of thousands of job have been lost.

"I don't think there's one killer issue. I think there are people out there that are saying 'if we had a union things might have gone better for us'," he said, explaining that many IT workers took notice when unions secured entitlements for One.Tel and Ansett employees.

According to Australian Bureau of Statistics trade union membership in the communications services industry fell 5.6 percent. Equivalent statistics for the period ending August 2001 won't be released until February, however the Communications Electrical and Plumbing Union (CEPU) isn't getting its hopes up.

The CEPU lost 449 of its 7,000 NSW members when Telstra subsidiary Network Design and Construction (NDC) downsized.

CEPU spokesperson Lyle Britton names tech companies where labour has become "surplus to requirement" with disturbing ease: VisionStream, constructor of the Brisbane-Sydney-Adelaide fibre optic link; Marconi, 3000 redundancies globally; Alstom, major supplier of network and information technology equipment. And the CEPU anticipates more job losses says Britton referring to grim company earnings figures, such as Fujitsu's AU$2.6 billion dollar loss for the September 2001 quarter.

But while membership bleeds from wounds in the tech industry, the ACTU says that it's efforts to organise labour in customer service industries -- many of which are located in regions accustomed to blue-collar union activity such as Newcastle -- are succeeding.

Unions are not renowned for co-operation but the CEPU, Finance Sector Union, Australian Services Union and the Communications and Public Sector Union, have combined to penetrate the call centre industry.

ACTU spokesperson Belinda Tkalcevic says the joint campaign has attracted nearly 7,000 new members since launching in 2000, the majority of those joining during 2001. According Tkalcevic, 7000 is a modest figure in comparison to what campaign could have achieved had industry turnover -which now stands at 30 percent-- been lower.

Defying the tech-collapse, the ACTU believes the Australian union movement's recent gains will outweigh losses sustained in other tiers of the IT and Telecommunications industry.

Tkalcevic believes that penetrating the customer relationship industry is vital to establishing white-collar unionism in Australia, but concedes that victories in the Tech-sector will be hard-won.

Culture and structural qualities of the industry, however, resist efforts to promote collective labour activity, according to Tkalcevic.

"Often the workplace is structured to make communications between workers difficult," she said. If you've ever heard a recorded message saying 'this call will be monitored for quality assurance purposes' you'll understand what she is referring to.

In more extreme circumstances, companies use intimidation tactics to stymie union activity. In one instance Britton describes, a telecommunication company placed its union representative behind an electronic security barricade allowing them to identify employees approaching the delegate with grievances.

Many of the obstacles to promoting unionism in call centres stem from weakening of the Federal Work Place Relations Act and industrial awards. Legislation no longer protects employee access to means for intra-office communication such as email or the right to conduct worker meetings at the company's expense.

The legal environment encourages call centres operated by foreign companies hailing from business cultures with strong anti-union sentiments to resort to legal avenues before negotiating with unions to solve work place problems according to Tkalcevic.

Call centre working conditions vary dramatically but for now the ACTU is focused on establishing a national industry code and improving worker morale with realistic productivity demands.

"There are some out there that are genuinely concerned about customer service but others obsessed with call turn-over," said Tkalcevic explaining that in some cases employees forfeit bonuses if they can't keep call times down to an average of two minutes.

However, as Tkalcevic explains, the customer service environment can be just as hostile to employee dignity, as performance rewards.

"The National Australia Bank made its call centre staff put red flags on their desks to indicate that they had gone to the bathroom," she said. "People only put up with these things for so long."

Currently, call centre enterprises have the upper-hand over unions. State governments offer generous rental and tax incentives, and often pay large sums, to corporations to locate call centres within their borders.

"We want to stop governments competing with each other at the workers expense," said Tkalcevic.

Thus far NSW and Victoria are the only states that haven't ratified the call centre industry code.

The endemic barriers to unionising employees in the IT-sector are more fundamental than those experienced by its industry-cousins and siblings.

"The fractured nature of the IT industry has made it hard for a union to emerge," said Gadier.

According to the ITWA, the IT-industry's strong individualist streak and distribution across a broad range of culturally distinct union jurisdiction industry inhibits development of an identity.

The ITWA has identified five separable tiers of workers ranging from high-level programmers to help desk professionals, with the potential to be served by at least seven unions and workers associations.

The situation predicates arguments for setting up the ITWA and so far the Labour Council is pleased with the results.

"We've only dipped our toes in the water but we've been surprise at how heavily the site's been supported," says Gadier. However, he remains modest about the prospect of matching the efforts of call centre representatives, and marching thousands of IT professionals into union ranks.

"We [the ITWA] are a long way from translating it into strong [memberhip] growth."

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