CWA President Chris Shelton: Keep Call Center Jobs in the U.S.

An op-ed by CWA President Chris Shelton was featured in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette urging the passage of national call center legislation that would help curb offshoring of American jobs and protect American consumers:

The offshoring of U.S. call center jobs has skyrocketed in recent years. Companies that are marketing products and services to U.S. residents too often are sending good call center jobs overseas. While America has been rapidly losing call center jobs, the number of offshore call center jobs servicing the U.S. has climbed sharply.

In many communities, the loss of a call center means the loss of a pillar of the local economy. Lost jobs mean lower tax revenues to fund important public services. And when companies offshore U.S. jobs, it puts more pressure on workers at home to accept lower wages and benefits and poorer working conditions. How can U.S. workers compete with overseas operations paying around a dollar an hour and forcing employees to work 12-hour days or longer? We shouldn’t be forced to.

U.S. consumers are put at risk, too. My union, the Communications Workers of America, has produced a new report spotlighting consumer fraud and scams that have cost customers millions of dollars and put their financial information and security at risk.

There is a solution. The U.S. Call Center Worker and Consumer Protection Act is bipartisan legislation that will help workers, consumers and communities. As hundreds of call center layoffs have been recently announced at Conduent in Moosic, Pa., Sen. Bob Casey knows how serious this problem is for working families nationwide and for Pennsylvania call center workers and consumers. He’s the lead Senate sponsor of this legislation, and we’re joining with him to get these safeguards passed.

This proposal requires that U.S. callers be told the location of the call center to which they’re speaking, be transferred to a U.S.-based call center on request, and make U.S. companies that offshore call center jobs ineligible for certain federal grants and taxpayer-funded loans. Unlike a lot that’s coming out of Washington, these commonsense proposals have the support of Republicans and Democrats in Congress.

Read the full piece here.