Sutherland BPO punishes whistle-blowing employees
By Juan Dela Cruz

Sutherland BPO which recently established a call centre in Davao City, Philippines has deliberately refused to continue employment of a whole batch of graduated trainees. This after the company found out that the members of this batch were the ones who had contacted a very popular national investigative TV show to report shady developments in the Davao location.

The whole ordeal stemmed from a disagreement between company officials and the local government over the capability of the city to supply infrastructural requirements of the company. Sutherland BPO, having established for less than a few months, threatened to pull out its operations in the city if their operating requirements are not met. All this was going on while the second batch of trainees were about to complete their required course before working on the operations floor. Sutherland BPO happened to pull out all their facilities including office equipment and shuttle services offered to employees. The trainees having found everything disappeared in such hurry and without notice immediately reported the incident to the most popular investigative TV show “Imbestigador” to get to the bottom of things. The show aired immediately after a few days and raised the ire of the Sutherland management. Having watched the show thoroughly, the management had concluded that it were members of the batch 2 trainees who were behind this bad press from the most popular TV station in the country.  Sutherland management  have decided not to continue their employment upon reopening after the disagreement with the local government was  amicably resolved shortly after closing their center.

Sutherland BPO continues its operations and has hired another batch of trainees to replace the whistle-blowing employees while the batch 2 trainees were left without having a clue on what to do with their unemployment situation. Sutherland is a global BPO company which also operates several centers in Chennai, Mumbai and Kerala.

(For questions or comments, please email me at 1delacruise at gmail.com)