Central Board of SETEP stands in solidarity with the TP Workers in the Project of Audi
The Central Board of the Workers Union in Teleperformance Greece, SETEP, is declaring its open support to the struggle of the workers in the Project of Audi in TP Greece, who are demanding a 20% increase in their salary, the recruitment of more staff to deal with the inhumane workload and appropriate training by paid trainers, to be equipped with proper tools and materials to handle the new tasks that keep accumulating on their workday.
Announcing a new addition to the project by Audi named Elli, which as per the workers will be a workload equivalent to an additional project, the Project Management made infuriating remarks stating the workers are not busy enough and the project is overstaffed, threatening with layoffs and claiming the workers can easily take up more work, adding on top that they should refrain from asking a higher payment for the added work as this is a request of the client and will be provided for free by the company and therefore the staff.
A large number of Colleagues discussed, requested the support of the Union Board and organized their struggle in a collective spirit, replied in a professional manner to the email, clearly stating their demands to the project and TP Management, followed by a big wave of colleagues in the project who raised their open support to the initial demands. A deadline has been raised until Friday, August 2nd for the Management to accept the demands with a written commitment before the colleagues discuss on further action to take place.
Hereby, we stand in solidarity with our colleagues of all language departments in Audi who have been overworked with endless overtime instead of hiring more people, do not have a minute to breath most of the work hours especially during the multiple outages in the project, are understaffed, underpaid and suffering from intimidation for a long time, and who have raised their issues multiple times participating in big numbers in the previous strikes, reaching to 95% participation at the first strike.
The TP Management was forced to admit that discriminating between the workers, a part of the workers, instead of all, have received a salary raise in the previous months and an increase in bonus and bonus eligibility has taken place in Audi, whilst the truth is that bonus has become almost impossible to reach as in other projects as well. The TP Management is hiding the fact that many workers in the Audi Project as well as across the company such as the English-speakers, the Portuguese-Speakers, the Spanish-Speakers, the Arab-speakers, the vast majority of Greek-Speakers (who get the minimum salary) remain severely underpaid despite handling the same workload and surviving with the same rents, high prices and general cost of living, not being able to go on holidays even when the company agrees to allow them to take their paid leave, despite the endless consecutive short term contracts by various payroll companies.
On the other hand, as a result of the workers struggles across the company but aiming to “divide and conquer” or to break the unified strike action across the company, the company has agreed to raise the salary of German Speakers (around 100 euro gross) in Audi as well as in some other projects and the Italian and French Speakers (50 euros gross for most and 100 euro gross in the rare occasion were someone has a 3 year consecutive contract with TP).
The TP Management keeps failing to explain how even the antilabour Greek Governments have raised the minimum salary to the insufficient yet still tangible amount of 180 Euros from 2019 to 2024, under the pressure of the workers movement in Greece, whilst the Company keeps the salaries stagnant for decades, refusing to increase the salaries of all the workers based on the high productivity, the skyrocketing cost of living and the record profits, it has announced in 2023 that keep increasing (+9.63%, 453.23 million euro) followed by continuous escalating annual profits.
We remain on the side of the workers in Audi as well as all other projects across the company, who are fuming and organizing their response and we demand from the TP Management to meet the deadline raised by the colleagues and implement their fair demands as well as start the negotiation with SETEP for a collective labour agreement that will protect all irrespective of the projects they are currently tasked in.