Overseas Call Centers Target Of Anti-Outsourcing Bill

[digitalsuperman]

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Overseas Call Centers Target Of Anti-Outsourcing Bill



WASHINGTON -- Saying they hope to stem the tide of jobs heading overseas, legislators introduced a bipartisan bill Wednesday in the House that would punish American corporations for offshoring their telephone call centers, making such companies ineligible for grants or guaranteed loans from the federal government.

Introduced by Rep. Tim Bishop (D-N.Y.) and Rep. David McKinley (R-W.Va.), the protectionist legislation would also put some aggressive mandates on call-center operations. Not only would customer service representatives working overseas for U.S. corporations have to disclose their locations upon request, they would also have to offer callers the option of being transferred to call centers back in America.

"Outsourcing is one of the scourges of our economy and one of the reasons we are struggling to knock down the unemployment rate and reduce the number of Americans who are out of work," Bishop said in a conference call with reporters. "We can't prohibit it, but we can certainly discourage it."

Although some call-center jobs have trickled back into the U.S. in recent years, the long-term trend has shown thousands of American-based customer service positions being outsourced to India and the Philippines, where workers come considerably cheaper. The Philippines' call-center industry recently surpassed India's as the largest in the world, according to a report in USA Today.

The call-center bill has strong backing from the Communications Workers of America, a union representing 700,000 workers, more than 150,000 of whom are customer service reps. Ron Collins, CWA's chief of staff, said that Americans have been losing decent-paying call-center jobs so that large corporations can save on labor costs. He praised AT&T for its decision to bring 5,000 customer service jobs back to the U.S. as part of its merger with T-Mobile.

"When I talk about this, I talk about it from experience," said Collins, a former Verizon call-center worker. "This bill is a very important step forward -- for jobs, for workers and for customers."

In addition to scuttling any grants or guaranteed loans for a period of five years, the U.S. Call Center Worker and Consumer Protection Act would require that companies that are about to offshore call-center jobs notify the Labor Department 120 days before they do so. The companies would then be put on a public list. Bishop said the law would apply to businesses in all industries.

Such a bill is unlikely to garner strong support from anti-protectionist, free-trade GOP members of Congress, but the inclusion of the call-center rules adds an interesting wrinkle. Given the widespread frustration of customers who end up on long calls with agents overseas, plenty of constituents, Republican and Democrat alike, would probably appreciate the option of dealing more regularly with customer service reps based in America.

"With Rep. McKinley as my primary Republican co-sponsor, I'm very hopeful he can bring a good number of his colleagues to the table," Bishop said. "It's hard to defend the practice. It's hard to say we would rather employ someone in the Philippines than in the U.S."

To bolster their case, the CWA said it plans to release a report next week that shows that consumer fraud and identity theft is higher at call centers abroad than in the U.S.


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please read also related articles. i will update it from time to time.

[digitalsuperman]

i hope and pray that this bill won't become a law i dread the day if it will become a law. thousands will be jobless

[æRLO]

i hope and pray that this bill won't become a law i dread the day if it will become a law. thousands will be jobless

This looks like a joint bill, I think this has a good chance of passing into a law. Co-authored by Republicans and Democrats man gud. They've been trying to decrease outsourcing sukad pa 2009 and karun pa jud ni sugod ug effect.

[digitalsuperman]

mao nay nakapait.kay murag united na ang duha.so dako nag chance ma sign into law.

before, correct me if im wrong but it was the Democrats who were pushing for this bill.but not it seems both sides are on the same plate.

well we can never count out the lobbyists. specially this bill will put the corporate lobbyist in a disadvantage.

[gareb]

one word: hypocrisy.

the mainstream economic order endorsed by the IMF-WTO insists that each and every country open up our economies for foreign investment, from services to resources, rendering our economies at the mercy of foreign corporations unaccountable governments and peoples but themselves and their profit margins.

now that they realize the adverse effects of overseas outsourcing to their own labor sector, to save their own economy and without thinking twice about the hypocrisy of it all, they want to prevent the jobs from bleeding out of their borders by renouncing the evils of but a part of the economic order that they themselves enshrined.

i wonder what our local neo-liberals have to say about this protectionist move?

so much for "trade liberalization" when you can just be selective about which part of a superpower's economy can be opened up.

[digitalsuperman]

i was wondering if the manufacturing of products of US companies in china can be categorized as outsourcing.

[eezychair]

Has anyone heard anything about the steps our government would take should this become a law in the US? If this has been around since 2009 and the bill is co-sponsored by both the republicans and democrats making its passing likely, perhaps the country should be ready...

[KlaytoN]

the mainstream economic order endorsed by the IMF-WTO insists that each and every country open up our economies for foreign investment, from services to resources, rendering our economies at the mercy of foreign corporations unaccountable governments and peoples but themselves and their profit margins.

now that they realize the adverse effects of overseas outsourcing to their own labor sector, to save their own economy and without thinking twice about the hypocrisy of it all, they want to prevent the jobs from bleeding out of their borders by renouncing the evils of but a part of the economic order that they themselves enshrined.

Now they're starting to get a doze of their own medicine. I remember years back when these capitalist-democratic superpowers tried shove these WTO thing in the throats of each and every country on this planet..

I'm no commie but perhaps the late Karl Marx had a point when he mentioned, "that Capitalism, when left to its own devices unfettered, will eventually eat up (destroy) itself and collapse."

[salbahis]

now thats a wake up call.. get your career straight... call center was never a long term career may lang na sa nangita pag long term career.... this is why i always say BPO are the cause for brain drain sa ato mga professionals...

[monroy]

one word: hypocrisy.

the mainstream economic order endorsed by the IMF-WTO insists that each and every country open up our economies for foreign investment, from services to resources, rendering our economies at the mercy of foreign corporations unaccountable governments and peoples but themselves and their profit margins.

now that they realize the adverse effects of overseas outsourcing to their own labor sector, to save their own economy and without thinking twice about the hypocrisy of it all, they want to prevent the jobs from bleeding out of their borders by renouncing the evils of but a part of the economic order that they themselves enshrined.

i wonder what our local neo-liberals have to say about this protectionist move?

so much for "trade liberalization" when you can just be selective about which part of a superpower's economy can be opened up.

You say that but why is it there are so many countries that implemented high degrees of liberalization and became extremely rich doing so. I think you are blaming the system when the failure is in people, not systems. Singapore went from one of the poorest to one of the richest countries in Asia because of foreigner-friendly investment policies. The same can now be said of China, which enjoys the largest amount of FDI in the world.

You like to post your hate for liberal policies but never provide any explanation why these policies fail and always ignore the many examples of countries that have succeeded because of neoliberal trade and investment policies. On the other hand, you ignore the many failed states that followed communist ideals which you espouse. Even if the U.S. were to pass this law, it doesn't discredit liberal trade policies, it just means the U.S. has lost its way. The problem in the U.S. is not caused by outsourcing, it is caused by overspending. Don't confuse the two.