More than 200 call centre jobs threatened

Jul 4 2009 by Iain Laing, The Journal

MORE than 200 jobs are at risk at a North East call centre after communications giant Orange decided to move its business.

Hartlepool-based Garlands Call Centres, which has more than 3,000 staff in the region, said that it had begun a 90-day consultation with workers on its account with the company.

Garlands said it will explore options including redundancy, redeployment within Garlands or a move to other contact centres.

Two hundred advisers and a further 16 staff at management level are affected. In total, around 400 staff currently work on the Orange account.

Chey Garland, chief executive of Garlands Call Centres, said: “We informed staff that the provisioning, provisioning support, escalations, fault management and tiered support work we handle on behalf of Orange was no longer required as Orange is moving some of this work to other contact centres from September 18, 2009, and refocusing the work that Garlands handles.