New Video Spotlights the Personal Costs of Offshoring

CWA's latest video — "Why Wouldn't You" — features call center workers from across the country sharing stories about losing their jobs to outsourcing.

Perla, a T-Mobile call center employee from Brownsville, Texas, says, "When I lost my job, I thought about my house payments, car payments, tuition." Iceatra, a T-Mobile worker from Allentown, Pennsylvania, says her "whole life flashed before my eyes."

A few short years after pocketing millions in taxpayer dollars to establish call centers, American companies are now offshoring these jobs, sticking communities with unemployment and financial ruin. From 2006 to 2010, the U.S. call center industry — representing 3 percent of the U.S. workforce — lost 500,000 call center jobs.

CWA has worked with companies like AT&T and US Airways to bring jobs back, including 5,000 Internet tech support jobs and 700 reservations jobs, but too many companies are continuing to send these good jobs overseas.

That's why CWA strongly supports legislation sponsored in the House by Reps. Tim Bishop (D-NY) and Dave McKinley (R-W. Va.), and in the Senate by Senators Robert Casey (D-Pa.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) that would make companies that off-shore call center jobs ineligible for taxpayer funded grants and loans, and offer U.S. consumers the opportunity to be connected to a U.S.-based call center. Unfortunately, the House bill was stalled over the summer when Republican lawmakers in the House of Representatives blocked consideration of the bill. The Senate version of the bill has been introduced and cosponsors are signing on.

Show your support by watching and sharing this video today. Then click here to tell your Senators to support the bill to bring these workers' jobs back home.