Union Isn’t Buying PacBell’s Incentives for Sales Force
Pacific Bell is pushing to expand a sales incentive plan that one employee union charges is already pressuring employees to sell services that customers don’t need or want.
The accusation comes as the phone company moves to begin offering incentives to customer service representatives based on each person’s total sales.
Under the new plan, PacBell sales employees would be rewarded for making goals for selling customers higher-profit services, such as voicemail, caller ID, call-waiting, call-forwarding and other add-on features.
It would be an expansion of incentive plans that were applied to PacBell sales managers and offices after the phone company was bought by SBC Communications of Texas in April.
But PacBell maintains that the sales goals do not encourage unethical sales practices.
“Pacific Bell and SBC do not tolerate unethical sales practices,” said Steve Dimmitt, PacBell’s vice president of consumer marketing. “Southwestern Bell has had incentives in its territory for years, and we’ve proven that it does not drive unethical behavior.”
The Telecommunications International Union, which represents about 550 PacBell service representatives in Northern California who are participating in the sales incentive plan, disagrees. On Tuesday, the union launched a public advertising and leafleting campaign to warn consumers and try to derail the incentive plan.
In addition, the union said it plans to file a formal complaint with state regulators urging them to investigate the plan, calling it a deceptive sales program very similar to a PacBell program halted by regulators in 1986.
“In our mind, the company is doing it all over again,” said Alicia Ribeiro, president of the TIU’s Local 103. “They are pressuring employees to shove this stuff down the customer’s throat.”
Representatives of the state Public Utilities Commission were not available for comment Tuesday. But one consumer group seconded the concerns raised by the union.
“What we’ve heard from consumers basically supports what the labor union said,” said Barry Fraser of the Utility Consumers’ Action Network in San Diego.
The union is running advertisements in Bay Area and national newspapers under the headline, “Has someone you know been victimized by PacBell’s high pressure sales tactics?”
In the text, the union claims that job security and pay “now depend on meeting unrealistic sales quotas set by PacBell managers who can lose up to 15% of their salaries if quotas are not met.”
PacBell conceded that it had instituted a plan a year ago that put 15% of managers’ salaries “at risk” and that the payment of the 15% is based on performance goals, including broad revenue goals.
The company also set sales goals for each office, and then added incentives for groups of employees. The TIU and the other union involved, the Communications Workers of America, both signed off on those plans. But when the company pushed to add sales incentives for individual workers, the TIU balked.
The CWA, far bigger than the TIU, has tentatively embraced the new individual incentive plan, according to PacBell and the TIU. CWA representatives were not available to comment Tuesday.
