Ready Call Center, it is a Belize based U.S. phone customer support center on New Road that employees hundreds of young Belizeans and which has become a hot bed of controversy. Ready Call was opened in June 2005 and almost immediately the complaining started. Workers told 7NEWS about problems ranging from being paid late or being shortchanged. Not much has changed since then. In fact Ready Call has expanded to six hundred workers and now the employees' attempt to unionize has, it seems, blown up in their faces. At least 12 employees have been terminated since last weekend and they say management has been slowly terminating them. Cordelia Belezaire is one of those ex-employees and this evening she vented her frustration to us.
Cordelia Belezaire, Fired from Ready Call
"I am no longer working a Ready Call because I, along with Miss Monica Hemmans, started out to work with out agents to form a union and after we got the petition and started handing it out to agents and having them signed, we were being targeted and slowly they started terminating us one by one. We haven't been giving any trouble. Why are we trouble? Because we decided to form a union? She is a Colombian and she needs to get her facts straight. From the beginning when we approached her she was having a problem because we wanted to join a union. Why do you think they fired Melanie after she did her Channel 7 interview?
People are tired of their pay being short. Its not my pay because I am not being paid as an agent. Agents make $20. This is $20 for two weeks pay. I am standing up for the agents that work here, they need to get their facts together and that's what Nubia Ramirez and her so called management team needs to do."
Keith Swift,
She says she didn't fire you guys for joining a union, she says its about your performance.
Cordelia Belezaire,
"That is here claim. We don't get graded here."
Keith Swift,
She says this is actually an opportunity for you guys.
Cordelia Belezaire,
"The opportunity is that they have five hundred people working there, some people without an education. I have my education but because we don't want to be chanced, this is a problem. A lot of people work in there that do have their education but they want to be taken advantage of. Imagine working for two weeks and your pay is $20.62. We were eating before Ready Call Center came to Belize and we will be eating after that Colombian person, whoever they are, leaves from out here."
