Schumer Call Center Bill to Reduce Outsourcing

Schumer Call Center Bill to Stem Job Outsourcing: Will it Boost Insourcing?

New York – The New York Daily News reports Democratic NY State Senator Chuck Schumer is proposing a bill that would tax businesses for transferring U.S. based call center jobs to foreign countries by charging them 25 cents for every service call placed abroad. The bill would also require companies to inform their customers when their calls are transferred out of the U.S. and to which specific country they are being transferred to. Is this bill that is also requiring foreign call centers to disclose their specific country due to a major decline in quality and service for U.S. citizens?

"1.6 billion calls are being transferred to call centers, often without the customer's knowledge," Schumer said.

Although outsourcing proponents claim that initial savings of up to forty percent occur with sending U.S. jobs overseas, some assert that companies “could see productivity losses of up to 60 percent when the full cycle of application development is outsourced, leading to longer development times."

In other words, giving U.S. jobs to cheap foreign workers is not locally sustainable – neither economically or from a competency/quality of services perspective. While India has been the largest recipient of U.S. jobs both there and here, no wonder we are seeing jobs vanish for our locals. But mounting and unprecedented job losses for American citizens have prompted U.S. policy makers to address the employment needs of their American constituents (ahem, voters) to halt the bleeding of jobs to foreign countries.

Is this bill, however, priming the pump for “backshoring”?

What good is it if U.S. companies like NCR, GE, and Dow bring their call center and/or development and manufacturing operations back home when they support foreign outsourcing companies and imported workers from India instead of American workers? Could Senator Schumer be taking a page right out of Ohio governor Ted Strickland's playbook?

Is Schumer's bill truly addressing the employment needs of American workers by penalizing U.S. businesses for handing jobs to workers in other countries or will this bill prompt an increase in the already unsustainable numbers of IMPORTED workers under student and labor F-1 and H-1B visa programs to continue taking jobs away from American graduates and professionals and driving down local wages and compensation plans?

Where is the equivalent bill to stop the influx of IMPORTED Indian outsourcing companies like Wipro, Tata and Infosys along with workers from India to take jobs from Americans in  professions like health care, electronic healthcare records, information technology and the legal profession? As the article notes:

"On their part, India’s top outsourcing companies Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys, Wipro and HCL have already started setting up development centres in locations such as Atlanta and Michigan. While TCS aims to double its foreign workforce from 10,000 currently to 20,000 over next five years, Infosys and Wipro could see non-Indians account for 10-15% of their total employee base in next 3-5 years, from around 5% currently." 

-2Truthy