By Tom Barton

29 Aug, 2002

Page 13

UNION bosses yesterday told the extreme right wing British National Party to keep out of a dispute over the transfer of Welsh call centre work to India.

The BNP has published literature on its website arguing against homeshopping company Reality's plan to route customer service calls from Newtown, Powys, to call centres in India.

The employees' union Usdaw is holding a ballot for strike action over the issue, and is calling for the company to guarantee jobs in Newtown.

But the BNP, on their website, claims that jobs were being lost because 'Welsh workers are not as cheap as Indians'.

The far right party says: 'Indians and Bangladeshis who speak the Queen's English are cheaper to employ than the Welsh, Kentish and Scots and so hundreds of companies either are relocating or already have relocated to hot-spots such as Bangalore, Dhaka and Bombay.'

But Usdaw officials yesterday hit out at the BNP, whose leader Nick Griffin lives near Welshpool, for getting involved in the campaign.

'They're bound to latch on, because that's how they feed, but we'll try not to be diverted by them,' said Usdaw's North Wales officer Bill Snell.

'Usdaw has no particular views on race or anything else like that - the issue for us is purely about the export of jobs.

'We do not want to play the race card in any way whatsoever. The fact that this concerns India is purely coincidental here, because if it had been Sweden, France, even California, the same principles would have applied.'

The official said the union was campaigning for a job security agreement that will guarantee the Newtown jobs will not be replaced by cheaper labour abroad, and that a nationwide ballot on whether to take strike action opened yesterday.

It is understood bosses at Reality, owned by mail-order giant Great Universal Stores, are unlikely to agree to such a guarantee, as they believe they could find it hard to reduce staffing levels if business was to take a turn for the worse.

A spokesman for Reality said last night that jobs in the Newtown centre were safe.

'Reality wishes to stress that there are no plans to close any UK contact centres as a result of the development of the India contact centres and that it is continuing to recruit to all seven of its UK contact centres.'