Dell complaints

[XPS_TEC]

Hey everyone I'm new to the boards and I'm with XPS in Ottawa!

First off let me say that I know there's going to be a lot of backlash to even the word union. But before everyone starts jumping down my throat I want you to think about it. At the very least some sort of representative group that can speak for the workers. If we're all going to be laid off anyway shouldn't we try to make some sort of a stand? At the very least Dell will be forced to alter their strategy somewhat as a group we'll be far more effective in making out demands heard and it's what Dell doesn't want so you gotta figure it's good for us . Now I'm willing to take suggestions for other ways to organize but I've also thought that maybe something along the lines of a one hour strike where everyone in the center logs off and refuses to take calls even something as simple as that will make our presence felt. Also another useful way is using the customers as a weapon informing them on each and every call about the layoffs and the shipping of jobs offshore I can assure you the customers also don't want that! Anyway this is obviously all bullshit unless we get some man/ woman power behind this so I'm leaving this up to people reading the board to get involved and this shouldn't just be constrained to just Dell Ottawa .. I think all Dell centers should revolt. Anyway think about it people start posting in this thread lets get organized and do something before it's too late!

Thank You
XPS_TEC

[Foamy]

It's way too late at this point XPS_TEC to even try to change things. Ottawa is a cost center now plain and simple. You're best option is to hope for the layoff or wait for your bonus and to quote Steve Miller "Take the Money and Run".

[sleekit]

If there is one thing Dell cringes at its the words Union and Lawyer. Personally I would go for it. One of the sites in the US was closed due to the employees trying to start a union - can't remember which one but it was recent.
As for our customers, they could be the Ace card we are looking for. I dont know how many times customers have said 'you speak english - thank god' then went on to ask if they could get my number. They just hate offshore support. I am not saying that they cannot resolve the problem its the Language Barrier!!

A press release stating that Dell is closing most North American support centres and moving them offshore would get customers attention.

Just my 2 cents worth.

[incident_man]

In order to make a decent go at organising the DHell labour force, it would have to be done across all remaining US and Canadian call centers, including those for government, healthcare, and enterprise, otherwise it won't work at all. It would definintely be difficult but not impossible. Those of you who are still employed at DHell that want to be organised would do well to make some phone calls to different unions locally while at home to see how much they could help. Unions always want more members, too. I could just imagine DHell HR crapping their pants having to have the shop steward in on every meeting during their attempts to rip individual employees over bullsh*t excuses. Having someone on the workers' side would be a great change of pace.
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Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

[XPS_TEC]

I'm already getting some great responses and i can see people are starting to notice this thread this makes me happy as we need most is lots of people and lots of discussion!!

After reading the posts that have shown up and then also sleeping on it I'm thinking perhaps something along the lines of a day or an hour of action would be best for us. I propose trying to get enough people involved that on a specific day and time everyone within the Dell North America network or at the very least in the consumer/business contact centres(regardless of role) simply log off their phones and shut down the entire network. Allow the customers to experience the reality of all support being shipped overseas. However if we did that we would also have to put out some sort of press release as well but I think that all Dell North American support shutting down would probably get noticed.

Anyway again this is only an idea right now and I also acknowledge that this is at the least tricky and at the most very dangerous from an employment perspective. But I've noticed that most of the employee threads right now involve people being scared for their jobs so I say to you why not take a stand ! Public outrage will be the only way to slow down/stop the jobs from being shipped overseas Dell hopes that by doing it gradually the public won't really notice or will simply ignore it. However if we shut down all at once our presence shall be felt! I'm encouraging everyone who reads this thread that works at Dell to tell their co-workers about this site then lets start planning agree on a day and start promoting it I truly believe that this is possible.

[HellResident]

You're absolutely right XPS_tec....a 1 hour work stoppage WILL accomplish something. It'll make Dell close the Ottawa Center that day instead of a week or month from now. And legally they would be right, since we'd be in breach of contract. Heck it would make everything alot easier, no need for Dell to pay all those pesky severence packages and bonuses when they can fire us right off legally. Yup it would make things much easier, but for Dell not the employees.

Press Release? Go for it. Call up the Ottawa Citizen and see what they say.


HellResident

[customer_don't_care]

Plus, there are still a ton of people in that building that truely believe that their job is secure, and they wouldn't do such a thing. This isn't high school, you need a reality check if you think something like that would actually work. Going to the press is going to ammount to nothing either, they won't listen to you, they will take you as a disgruntal employee, and not publish a word. The only real way to make a stand, is to show up to work each day on time, and do your job misserably. Show no iniative, and don't support any of the causes that Dell is involved in. Why support a charity through them, and make them looks like a hero. Support them outside of work. Truely don't care to be there, and spend your time surfing the net. Use your 10 minutes of AUX personal everyday. And do only the bare minimum expected of you. This includes sales, don't push for TS sales. You will all be gone soon, and this is the only thing justifying some of the managements existance right now, so if you don't hit the quotas, they go bye-bye. If you all really want, you all have justifiable reason to go on stress leave due to your un-fit work conditions.

[XPS_TEC]

You both disappoint me, I'm not just talking about shutting down the Ottawa call centre for an hour I'm talking about closing EVERY NORTH AMERICAN call centre for an hour. That will have an effect on Dell's bottom line and will generate a fair amount of notice in the Dell community, and they can't close everyone down at least not right away. Apathy does nothing for the cause of labour, you think that the best way to beat Dell is to do a shitty job and try to avoid causing a scene till they're ready to lay you off. But how long can you keep doing that just going from job to job waiting to get laid off and find the next one. I'm offering a chance to you to deal a blow to Dell on the world stage. But the only way to deal this blow is for everyone to co-operate and organize.


The worker of the world has nothing to lose, but their chains, workers of the world unite.

[incident_man]

XPS_TEC, I don't think one hour would be sufficient. Now if you can get enough people to participate (a majority), a 24 to 48-hour period, presumably when call volume is the highest, would produce a more desired effect. Not only would it cause DHell to take notice, but the media would get wind of it as well. Again, it would have to take place across all DHell sites in the US and Canada, otherwise DHell would punish the site involved, close it down and transfer the call volume amongst the other remaining sites. As far as organising is concerned, you'd have to do everything anonymously. If management gets word of it and can trace it to the source....goodbye.....game over. Again, contact your local labour organisations and see if they can give some advice or help in any way. It wouldn't be sufficient to organise just one site, all of them would have to be organised for your idea to work.
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Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

[XPS_TEC]

I agree with you 100% incident in order for the workers to have any pull we must co-operate across all call centres /manufacturing plants and across all lines of business. I figure that if there's anyplace that we can jump start this revolt it's right here! That being said I'm sure Dell keeps an eye on this forum for just such a post so I'm looking for another way to allow groups to communicate with each other. Meanwhile I'm also posting everything on this board though a tor server just to keep myself safe. Though hopefully this board doesn't log IP's ... perhaps the Mods' could let me know about that one It's why I'm hoping that lots of people read this thread and hopefully we can get people established at each centre that are willing to help with the effort.

[sleekit]

Yes, we have to protect ourselves - big brother is watching.
I will be talking to a friend tonight who is a union rep. Will get some info and post it later. I will also look into press releases and TV news reports locally. I have some connections but cannot promise anything concrete yet.
Damn, i hate Dell!!
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Whether you think you Can or Can't your probably Right!

[Dhellp]

I feel I must respond to this thread as I always wanted a union in Dell Ottawa, even in the good times when no one would listen to me. As someone who has worked in a unionised environment both in Canada and in Europe I can tell you that Hellresident is right that a wildcat work stoppage, strike whatever you want to call it, is going to achieve nothing other than get alot of people fired.

Even if, and its a big if, you could get Dell workers in every North American call centre to log off the phone the fact is that this would be an illegal strike with probably even worse consequences for our US based colleagues. It will make it even easier for Dell to fire folks. Furthermore its unrealistic to organise collective action across Dell in the US and Canada because the only people with contacts that widespread are senior managers.

The fact is that the best option would have been to have unionised two years ago in Ottawa but theres always been too many delusional people or gutless types. So you may ask now the sites probably going to close what would be the point? Roughly theres two reasons:

1) By being unionised we can help prevent too many of us being PIPed out with lies and excuses meaning that at least we can ensure that the vast majority of Dell Ottawa employees leave with proper severence packages.

2) Being unionised means that it at least becomes more complicated for Dell to shut the site down. I dont mean that unionising will stop this as I think its inevitable, but because unions in Canada are political and the negative publicity for Dell in Canada following a site shutdown would be enormous and so will at least cause Dell to tread more carefully than usual. Labour laws in Canada are more union friendly and unionised workplaces in Canada are at least a little more important to politicians. This being Ottawa also makes it more so.

The best way to deal with this is for Dell Ottawa employees to continue to do their jobs as we were contracted to do AND using our own time and not company time (they can fire you for this) we unionise the site by joining a union, when enough people in our site do this then a union can represent our interests, because trust me there is noone looking out for our interests in Dell Ottawa. In this regard given the nature of our work CEP, Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada is probably the best union for us to join as they have unionised call centres like Bell and other tech companies. The link is below, I have joined and so should you.

http://www.cep.ca/techworkers/index_e.html

and also take a look at

http://www.cep.ca/techworkers/cep_tech_sector.pdf


If Ottawa can unionise then at that point other sites in the US at least have a better chance to also unionise.

[sleekit]

As management monitors this site they already know about this thread - sooo - let city hall know whats goin on - they have a big steak in the Kanata park Complex - Also, let our MPP and MP's know that canadian jobs are going offshore. If we dont tell them NO-ONE will.

Here are the links -

City of Ottawa - http://www.city.ottawa.on.ca/index_en.html

Ontario Provincial Government - http://www.ontla.on.ca/web/members/member_addresses.do?locale=en

Goverment of Canada - http://canada.gc.ca/directories-repertoires/direct-eng.html#mp

These links contain all the e-mail addresses so if you have taken time to read this get to the links and let them know!!
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Whether you think you Can or Can't your probably Right!

[XPS_TEC]

I like what I"m seeing so far perhaps we could get a union into Dell Ottawa even if only to slow Dell down and make them pay for every tech on the way out. Dhellp I'm going to call one of the organizing reps at that union tomorrow and ask for some advice perhaps I'll have something useful to post tomorrow!

[XPS_TEC]

Well everyone its been a day of phone calling with not much progress. I've been trying to get in touch with the organizing official for the CEP to get some much needed info to take this planning to the next level. I left a voice mail with him and hopefully I will get a response soon and when I do I will post info about what I learn here!! At the moment if you're at Dell Ottawa or really at any Dell contact/manufacturing center the best thing you can do is start talking about A)this website(specifically this thread) and B) about unions in general or specifically the CEP (link is noted a few posts above. ) What we need now is people to get talking personally at this stage it doesn't matter if you're for or against a union but we need to get the word out and get people discussing what we can do to take on Dell.