Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Call centre

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I User:Ahering@cogeco.ca, strongly object to deletions of my edits to the article Call centre by User:Calltech.

What User:Calltech challenges is the authenticity of the subject of unionisation of Call centres. The fact that the Labour movement continuously attempts and at times succeeds in organising assorted sectors of business, and Call centres are no exceptions, is a matter of public knowledge.

Specifically, the United Steelworkers have organised and kept organised the Telespectrum call centre, located in St. Catharines, Ontario for a number of years. There have been at least 3 collective bargaining agreements. At present, it is District 6's Local 6520, which has this location under contract. However, 2 other centres in St. Catharines are in the process of becoming organised. It is a known fact, that the United Steelworkers are expanding into other areas of work all the time, specifically as a response to the deleterious effects of globalisation/outsourcing upon labour in general.

The CBA of Local 6520 is serving as a model in organising efforts of the umbrella organisation. Even prior to the organisation of targeted sites, Steelworkers are actively supporting new members in labour courts within the NAFTA region. The existence of these efforts is a matter of public record, which includes the public record of labour law cases covering disputes between labour and employers, certainly in the Province of Ontario.

User:Calltech alleges that the link to Local 6520 is "POV", or advertising. This is false. A union local has no need to advertise. Members become members simply as a part of becoming employed in a Union shop. Who would anyone advertise to? Employers? Hardly. Organising efforts are personal ones that take place outside the public realm. The results, once a location has been organised, can be deemed a matter of public record. The fact that call centres are being targeted for organisation by the labour movement is likewise a matter of public record, through labour board cases.

User:Calltech further alleges that a link to a website that is deemed to be "under construction", does not qualify for mentioning in Wikipedia. This is absurd, because Wikipedia itself, as well as the majority of websites are all a "work in progress". Just what makes Local 6520's website any more "under construction" than any other website - public or private sector? They all change all the time.

User:Calltech further alleges that membership in Local 6520 disqualifies one from editing Wikipedia. This has no basis in fact whatsoever. Obviously industry insiders would have the majority of information on a topic, be they labour, management, vendors, consultants or customers of the trade. Unlike a call centre operator, or vendor of goods and services to a call centre, a local union does not seek any customers or to make any money off anybody. A local has its CBA (Collective Bargaining Agreement) and does its best to get along with ITS contractual partner, the employer, and its members who pay union dues. No local will ever seek to expand beyond its realm in this case. That would be an effort on the part of the National or International office of a union, exclusively. Even if every call centre in NAFTA were organised, each place would be its own local, even within one city.

What possible nefarious motives User:Calltech suspects I possess for accurately inserting commentary about the documented existence of a growing unionisation of Call Centres, which, by the way, tracks with the expansion plans of the parent organisation, as correctly outlined on Wikipedia, is beyond me.

There is really only one motive that I would suspect for anyone to keep this information out of Wikipedia, and that is the desire of employers whose shops are not organised, to prevent their employees from learning that it is possible to become organised and that precedents exist.

No matter how anyone feels about the labour movement and its inroads into call centres, and I wrote no personal judgement about that in the article, it is an irrefutable fact, that this effort exists and will only grow. The reasons for the growth can be plainly seen in the article already. It is not the best or highest paid work environment. If work environments had always been absolutely wonderful, there would never have been any trade unions. The same reasons that existed for any union to come about are true for this environment, which is the fuel for the growth of organisation in this field. All I sought to do was to indicate the existence of this effort in the article, without further judgment about it.--Achim 03:38, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

For User:Achim's response to User:Calltech's statements below, please see the discussion page.


For further evidence in support of the fact that the organising of call centres is not an isolated event, I cite the following documents:


I offer the following e-mail paste from the Editor of the magazine, permitting the use of the article for this purpose: From: Lorraine Endicott To: 'Achim Hering' Cc: Liz Ukrainetz ; Frank Saptel Sent: Thursday, October 05, 2006 7:57 AM Subject: RE: Wikipedia - Call Centre Article - Mediation - Your current issue


Dear Achim,

Good luck with your Wikipedia discussion. In a few months we expect to have our website running more smoothly and will be posting such stories about organizing under our series "Talking About Organizing". In the meantime, in case it helps, I have attached here the call centre story as pdf files.

All the best, Lorraine Endicott Editor, Our Times

These documents should be removed immediately upon conclusion of the mediation. I offer these exclusively for the purpose of providing evidence of my case. The publisher has been asked for an online version.

Additionally, I suggest that mediators may contact Michelle Masserey at http://www.ufcw832.com/. Her local 832 currently has call centres under contract as well. Achim 23:04, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User:Calltech's Track Record

For further evidence, I respectfully request the Mediator to examie the Contributions of User:Calltech, as follows: (Newest | Oldest) View (Newer 50) (Older 50) (20 | 50 | 100 | 250 | 500).

15:15, 5 October 2006 (hist) (diff) Talk:Call centre (→Mediation request) 02:42, 5 October 2006 (hist) (diff) User talk:Ahering@cogeco.ca (top) 12:41, 3 October 2006 (hist) (diff) m Autodialer (rm link spam) (top) 14:45, 24 September 2006 (hist) (diff) Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Call centre (Added Wikipedia citations and cleanup) 00:15, 24 September 2006 (hist) (diff) Wikipedia talk:Requests for mediation/Call centre (→User:Calltech Statement 1) 14:02, 23 September 2006 (hist) (diff) Wikipedia talk:Requests for mediation/Call centre (→User:Calltech Statement 6) 12:25, 23 September 2006 (hist) (diff) m Call centre (rm link spam) 01:52, 23 September 2006 (hist) (diff) Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Call centre 22:11, 22 September 2006 (hist) (diff) Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Call centre 01:02, 22 September 2006 (hist) (diff) Talk:Call centre 00:56, 22 September 2006 (hist) (diff) Call centre (Revert - remove link spam and POV see Talk) 14:43, 21 September 2006 (hist) (diff) Talk:Call centre 14:34, 21 September 2006 (hist) (diff) Call centre (→External Links - Removed - link to unrelated website under construction) 12:37, 21 September 2006 (hist) (diff) Call centre (Remove Unionisation (POV not supported by link to site under construction)) 12:35, 21 September 2006 (hist) (diff) m Call centre (→Mathematical theory - Remove promotion) 18:19, 15 September 2006 (hist) (diff) m Emergency Alert System (→External links - Removed additional links to ad filled pages) 18:16, 15 September 2006 (hist) (diff) m Emergency Alert System (→External links - Removed link to advertisement filled article) 15:58, 12 September 2006 (hist) (diff) m Emergency Broadcast System (revert) 12:32, 12 September 2006 (hist) (diff) Call centre (cleanup links) 18:11, 7 September 2006 (hist) (diff) m Emergency Broadcast System (→External links - revert) 22:47, 3 September 2006 (hist) (diff) m Emergency Broadcast System (Reverted) 16:03, 1 September 2006 (hist) (diff) Notification system (→Commercial)

My point: All this user does is remove and revert. There are no real contributions to speak of. The only justification he offers is that the links provided in the articles have ads. Big deal. Not every website owner has a lot of money. Many of them finance their web presences by using some ads. That's life. That does not mean that the information that is provided is bad. For instance, one of the weblinks he removed was from a non-profit organisation. In another case it was from a guy who seems to work out of his house and he posts some articles on his site, apart from selling some consulting to make a living. Again, big deal. Does this mean that the articles he posts are all some sort of scam? I don't think so but invite you to look for yourself. He also removed a link to the website for my little local with 500 souls just getting by on $9.50 to $13.30/hour in Canadian funds. The point behind it was to provide evidence that there are unions which are actively organising and remaining in call centres. That is simply a fact. Steelworkers do this and so do others. It's all part of the labour movement. He claims that I do this for self promotion. I want to advertise the fact I work in a call centre? Is that something anybody would brag about? If there were anything to brag about, it would be that if someone came to me for help as a shop steward, I would do everything I could under the CBA to help. But again, that would be private information. A local does not have any need to promote itself. All any local does is to see that its members are protected under the law and under the CBA that governs its work. That's it. I don't organise other call centres. If I did, I certainly would not promote the fact because that would be counterproductive. If you read the article I provided, you will see what typically happens. The only way a union organises a place if if the labour relations are so bad, that the workers are so angry, that as a very last resort they turn to the union for some protection. Then you have a few individuals who take the bull by the horns and risk their jobs to organise the place. Then they get fired and need back-up to get back in. It happened that way in Sudbury, it's happening that way in St. Catharines and in many other places. Promotion is hardly effective at best. People seek it out because they have no other alternatives. Nobody goes out of his or her way to give up part of one's pay for union dues. So, the user "Calltech" has two arguments: self promotion, which I ask you to check out for yourself and ads on a website to help finance it. He makes it look like it's some evil merchandising scheme. It's just people trying to get by with a web presence. My point is, the ads are necessary to have the web content for small organisations or individuals and do not diminish the content of the pages and that self promotion is no factor here because there is nothing to brag about and bragging would serve nothing anyway. I appreciate your taking these points into account and look forward to your decision. Achim 00:40, 6 October 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Response

I User:Calltech have removed links presented by User:Achim because they represent link Spam as defined by Wikipedia. I will not even dignify the attempts by this user to question my motives since I have not contributed any opinion or text to the article in question Call centre. By questioning my motives, this user is attempting to divert attention from the topic at hand, whether his links in this article are spam. I have no personal opinion and presented none about this topic.

There is NO DISPUTE regarding the fact that there are call centers that have a union presence. The dispute centers around undue weight this topic has been afforded in this article, the non-neutral POV expressed by this user, and specifically the use and content of multiple links to a website under the control of this user. I also have no interest in suppressing neutral information - I do, however, strongly object to this user's link spam.

I removed these links several times; prior to the second time recommending User:Achim that he place his request for link and POV in the article's Discussion Section as is Wikipedia's recommended approach to resolving these types of disputes. User:Achim chose to ignore this recommendation and proceeded to claim he was in the right and did not need to submit to peer review - he then simply reinstated his links which I again removed. This resulted in this dispute going to Arbitration rather than the recommended process of article discussion.

The links in question that I removed were included both in the text of the article and also under a new section created by this user called "External links". There were no other links in this section. I removed these links for the following reasons and I have cited specific standards that this user has violated when linking to his own site here:

  • Wikipedia External links makes clear what types of links are spam or should be avoided. User:Achim violates three of these standards.
  • Item 1 - "Any site that does not provide a unique resource...". User:Achim's web page provides virtually no information other than links to another commercial website, a community, and a link BACK to this Wikipedia article relative to call centres. Its purpose is to provide information about a specific local Steelworker's Union.
  • Item 3 - "A website that you own or maintain, even if the guidelines above imply that it should be linked to. This is because of neutrality and point-of-view concerns; neutrality is an important objective at Wikipedia..." User:Achim has demonstrated a level of control and contribution to this website and clearly can not claim neutrality.
  • Item 4 - "Links that are added to promote a site..." User:Achim clearly demonstrated this violation by repeatedly adding his website both in the article section as well as in the new section "External link" which was created solely to promote his website.

1. The Website referenced in the link was a geocities.com sub directory that had minimal information regarding call centers and the information contained in the article. It provided absolutely no new information or value to a visitor to this site other than the apparent promotion of a local union. When I first visited it, the site presented a message "Under Construction". It presented a logo and graphic for Local 6520, United Steel Workers. The only reference to Call Centre was a link back to the Wikipedia article! Therefore, the website manager and User:Achim appeared to be coordinating the exchange of links.

2. User:Achim accuses me of having a nefarious motive. He failed however, to divulge his own relationship with this website and labor union represented in this website. According to this site, User:Achim is an active member of local 6520 and also an active contributor to this website. Therefore, he has motives of self promotion, the promotion of a website he either controls, manages or contributes, and the promotion of a local labor union in Toronto in which he is an active member. It is very likely his motives are a combination of the above. These also violate Wikipedia's rules against links to self promoting websites. This site also links to an active commercial call center organization where I suspect User:Achim is employed.

3. It appears User:Achim is expressing a POV in this article and then attempting to support this with a reference to a website that he makes contributions or controls. He never discloses this obvious conflict of interest.

4. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the topic of call center unionization is extremely minor when considering the entire spectrum of call center related information. See Wikipedia standards on [Undue Weight], particularly the statement "An article should not give undue weight to any aspects of the subject, but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight appropriate to its significance to the subject". I provided the following research on the significance issue of this topic here:

  • The article call centre encompasses a wide breadth of issues and topics. Using metrics from Yahoo! (which is the only major search engine that publishes these statistics), one finds the following search result statistics. During the month of August, 2006, the term "call centre" and "call center" (which Yahoo! treats synonomously) and which is the title of this article Call centre was searched 59,970 times followed by "call center software" at 7991 times. "Call center" with any combination of "union" or "unionisation" (which is the title of the disputed section of this article) was searched a total of 31 times!
  • Further, using Google, searching on the term "call center" returns 32 million pages. Searching on "call center union" (and derivatives) returns approximately 3000 pages. Contrast this with the single line issue such as "call center CRM" under the "Technology" section. It returns over 730,000 pages, nearly 250 times the topic of "call center unions"!

Projecting this to Wikipedia is only natural. The prominence that "unionization" has been afforded far exceeds the relevance to what Wikipedia visitors are seeking and the information that has been published on the web. If anything, this topic probably deserves a single line item or reference with a NPOV, but certainly not the prominence that User:Achim has elevated this topic nor his non-neutral position and link to his website.

There are millions of website pages that provide call center information, training, scheduling, products, services, consulting, etc. on the web that are NOT linked into this article. These websites provide volumes of useful information about call centers. user:Achim has put TWO links to his own controlled website for purposes of self promotion which is a clear violation of Wikipedia's spam guidelines.

5. Therefore, I STRONGLY recommend removal of User:Achim POV and links from this article. I also recommend that this topic be reduced to a line item under an existing section.

6. I agree to be a party to this mediation forum, although I believe the process of submitting the changes to the article through the discussion page should have been done first.

7. Additionally, the personal attacks levied in these discussions and on my [User_Talk:CallTech] are getting out of hand and need to stop.