Also in that edition is another similar report to the one published on Waiting on Hold yesterday:
3. Promoting IR: Where those taxpayer dollars are going...
An anonymous tipster writes:
Curious to see Beazley and Co complaining about $100 million of taxpayer money going to the advertising and associated costs to promote the Government's new IR reforms, definitely valid as it appears.
I work for a Private Call Centre Operator in Melbourne – on Thursday there was a staff email sent out asking for volunteers to work in a new campaign on our days off or work back late/start early for a couple of hours. The incentive was above the standard rate of pay to work on the campaign – what it was at the time was a mystery and we wouldn't find out until the day of training (also the same day that we "hit the phones").
The rates were $22.50 p/hr for Monday to Friday, $28 p/hr for Saturday and a whopping $37 p/hr for Sunday. (Normal rates are approx $15 p/hr during the week for perms and $19 p/hr for casuals).
But here is where it gets interesting. First shift for this campaign was today (Sun. 09/10) – started at 10am for two hours of paid training and then do a four hour shift from 12-4pm, with another group starting training at 2pm to take over from 4-10pm. Training consisted of telling us that the campaign was the WorkChoice Hotline (inbound call centre) and we would be responsible for answering very basic questions regarding the "proposed" legislation that has not yet been finalised.
We were told the advertising campaign would start that day... I sat on the phone waiting for a call from 12pm right through to 4pm, as did approximately another 150-160 operators, shock/horror – NO CALLS. The advertising hadn't even begun!!! No-one knew the hotline number to call in the first place!
So there we sat for four hours with not one call for four hours, at a rate of $37 p/hr. When I got home later in the day I took notice that the advertising didn't even start till halfway through the 6pm news.
So approximately $35,000 in wages is what was paid out to our group (not including Supervisors and Trainers) to sit there and do nothing! And that is what we were getting paid – God knows what the company was actually pulling from them. Only regret? I wished I had taken along The Latham Diaries to ease the boredom.
To top it off, it was mentioned that the Government had originally asked for a 300 seat call centre to be operated at the start.
Any other reports?
