Nearly 700 jobs are to be lost at two call centres serving Littlewoods owner Shop Direct in Aintree and Bolton, as most of the operation moves to South Africa.
Union representatives for the staff, who are employed by specialist company Webhelp to handle customer service inquiries for Littlewoods and Very.co.uk, said the UK jobs were being cut to save money.
Workers in Webhelp’s South African centre earn just £2.39 an hour compared with more than £6.70 an hour in the UK.
Mike Aylward, an Usdaw divisional officer, said: “No British worker can compete with £2.39 per hour and they shouldn’t have to. Companies should have loyalty to the workforce and communities that have made them what they are.”
He challenged Shop Direct to be honest with customers and ask them whether they would like the call centres to move to South Africa.
The union plans to ballot its members at the call centres on industrial action to oppose the closure of the two operations. The Bolton centre will shut in March next year and the Aintree one in March 2017. Some of the work will be moved to a call centre in Cardiff but most will go to South Africa.
The changes will not affect about 400 staff in Aintree who work directly for Shop Direct handling financial services telephone queries.
Gillian Campbell, the HR director of Webhelp, which took over the running of the call centres from services company Serco in August this year, conceded that the move would save money.
“There is a need to ensure we can realise cost savings to reinvest in the technology needed to allow us to continue to develop the way we engage with customers,” she said.
As shoppers spend more online, Campbell said they increasingly preferred live web chats and contact via mobile apps or social media rather than speaking on the phone and Webhelp needed to research and invest in building services to handle that.
“Our proposal to Shop Direct was around transforming the business to cope with changing buying patterns,” she said.
Alex Baldock, Shop Direct’s chief executive, said: “Change can be difficult but it is necessary and we are confident that the proposals outlined by Webhelp will ensure we can continue to develop the fantastic digital service our customers are telling us they expect from Shop Direct.”
Usdaw said such changes could have been handled in the UK and Webhelp had rejected all its proposals to save jobs during a three-month consultation period.
It suggested that further jobs could be cut at Webhelp’s Cardiff call centre but Campbell said there were “absolutely no plans” to close that operation.
