Never mind BBC staff complaining about being forcibly moved from west London to Salford, employees at an Orange call centre in Darlington have been confronted with a rather more drastic relocation – to Manila in the Philippines. The "offshoring" initiative is connected with the merger of Orange and T-Mobile, who together operate three large call centres in north-east England.
To help the 40 nightshift customer service staff make up their minds about whether they should abandon the home comforts of Darlington (population 95,000) for tropical Manila (pop. 11.5m) they were given a sheet showing the tantalising terms on offer, including a rice allowance of £14.28 per month, a laundry allowance of £1.78 per month and an annual salary of £2,036, rising to £2,188 for employees with more than six months' experience.
Staff were told they could alternatively move to a dayshift in Darlington with an £8,000 pay cut or take a voluntary severance package.
Orange has now apologised, and insists it was not asking its staff to move to Manila. It blamed an "unofficial move" and an "HR error". However, a spokesman for the company said "a few" of the Darlington nightshifters have "expressed a genuine interest" in relocating to the Philippines, rice allowance and all, and they had a "duty of care" to discuss the possibility with them.
Moving to a tropical archipelago of 7,107 islands may sound tempting but life there may have more in common with Daniel Defoe's historic description of Darlington as having "nothing remarkable but dirt" – Manila is the most densely populated city in the world and its smogs are responsible for more than 4,000 deaths each year.
