This is the first of a series of stories written by young women involved in the Decisions for Life campaign.
My name is Arlene Serelina, I am 30 years old. I am not married but have two children, a girl Marcilee, age 12, and a boy, Landen, age 3. I started working for a call centre namely Teletech Holdings in September 2008. Teletech is an international company who opened a site here claiming to be assisting with the high rate of unemployment in South Africa. The client is based in the United States and Teletech serves as a customer care service.
The first time I set foot in the building I told to myself that this should be a great company to work for. This was while looking from the outside in. I was very excited when I started working there. I told a friend of mine that I am going to hold on to this job as it seems you could grow with the company as the company is new in the country. In my interview I was told that I could easily work myself up.
Once I started my training for the position of call centre agent, I made a promise to myself that I am going to give this job my all so that I can grow, get promoted quickly and move up in the company. This would be a way to provide for my family.
By working for Teletech I got a lot of good training on my accent, conversational skills, life-skills and on the product I was assisting the client with. In training you hear stories of people who haven’t been working for very long for the company who are promoted. This I felt was proof that I could work myself up in no time.
In less than a year I was promoted to a Quality specialist but this was nothing like I expected. My salary basically stayed the same and I no longer had the benefit of getting the added incentives you qualify for being an agent. This meant that I was earning less. When speaking to my immediate manager about this there would always be excuses and promises that they would give us incentives. This never materialized.
Working at Teletech put a lot of strain on my personal life. I worked very long hours and hardly saw my kids and family. My relationship with my boyfriend suffered because of the long hours. We have since separated.
I have made lifelong friends while working for Teletech but we were all working under the same difficult conditions and everyone was unhappy. A very good friend of mine introduced me to the Decisions for Life trade union campaign. Even though I was not a union member I was welcomed into the campaign and at the launch of the campaign in August 2009 I was given the opportunity to share my experiences as a call centre worker. I then committed myself to see the campaign through to the end.
I decided that I could not just continue to be unhappy with my working conditions, long hours and low remuneration. I tried organising some young women at Teletech but they felt too intimidated. I decided that it was time for me to leave. It really was not a tough decision to make as, besides the professional relationships I had built, nothing else stopped me from leaving the company. I was on top of the world when I made the decision.
To find another job was a tough one. I searched the internet and newspapers on a daily basis. I applied to almost every position that I thought was interesting. It took a lot of money out of my pocket because to buy a newspaper everyday and pay R12 an hour at the internet cafe is expensive, especially if you are unemployed.
I applied for a job at Duracell in Cape Town and about a week and a half later a got a job offer from Duracell in United Kingdom. I was very excited when I saw the job offer and started making plans to apply for the job in United Kingdom. After doing some research I decided not to take the risk of going to a strange country without any support network and with no real idea if the job would be better than what I could get in South Africa.
After some time searching. I saw that a free local newspaper was advertising for call centre agents. I applied and got the job and in my second day of training. Because of the skills I had gained at Teletech after a week I was promoted to supervisor of one of the departments. What I like most about the new job is that it pays me more and I only work from Monday to Friday from 9.00am till 17.00pm. I don’t have to work on weekends or on my days off. I am home by 17.45pm to spend time with my kids which is very different from when I was getting home at 22.30 while working for Teletech.
My dream now is to get a place for myself and my children and to continue working in the Decisions for Life campaign. I hope that through telling my story I can touch the lives of many young women, young women who do not know their rights in the workplace, at school or in their personal lives.
Related links:
Read more about the Decisions for Life experiences in South Africa
