Bertelsmann has announced it will sell its call center business. Teleperformance, a French company, will purchase the customer service provider Majorel, of which Bertelsmann owns almost 40 percent. The purchase price is approximately three billion euros, with Teleperformance paying two billion in cash and one billion with its shares. The competent supervisory authorities still need to approve the sale.
In 2018, Bertelsmann and the Moroccan Saham Group merged their call centers and transferred the business branches to the Majorel joint venture in 2019. The content moderation for social media platforms, such as Facebook, was also transferred to Majorel. Majorel claims to have around 82,000 employees worldwide, operates in 45 countries, and is active in around 70 languages for about 500 customers.
A Bertelsmann spokesman explained the reasons for the sale, stating that the global market for call center providers is consolidating strongly, and the size of the company is significant for customers worldwide when awarding contracts. Teleperformance, with over 400,000 employees, will bring vast resources to the table.
Majorel operates numerous call centers that provide customer service for companies like Booking.com, as well as content moderation for large social media platforms such as Facebook or TikTok. The moderators watch very incriminating material on a daily basis and have to decide how to deal with it in line with respective terms of use. The working conditions have already brought trade unions into action in Germany, with employees at the former Arvato location in Berlin being employed precariously, according to the Verdi service union.
Majorel is currently involved in a labor lawsuit in Kenya, involving alleged exploitation, obstruction of union organization, and false pretenses in hiring. US provider Sama, who moderated content in local call centers for Meta, had been sued by former employees. Sama withdrew from content moderation in Kenya after Time magazine reported on the conditions, but now both companies have to answer in court. The court in Nairobi ordered Meta to suspend business relationships with Sama and Majorel temporarily following the allegations.
