A bipartisan Bill aimed at curbing outsourcing of American call centre and service jobs to low-cost nations like India has been reintroduced in the US House of Representatives.
Titled “The US Call Centre and Consumer Protection Act”, the Bill proposes to make companies shipping the service jobs overseas “ineligible for federal grants or guaranteed loans”.
Co-sponsored by Congressmen Gene Green and David McKinley from Texas and West Virginia respectively, the Bill envisages creating a public list of “bad actors” consisting of companies that shipped all or most of their service work overseas.
A Democratic Congressman from Texas, Green said there are 54,000 call centre jobs in his Greater Houston area alone and 2.5 million nationwide, adding: “It is important that American workers continue to have access to good service sector jobs and receive a livable wage. Unfortunately, we have seen call centre jobs moved overseas to India, the Philippines, and other countries.”
He expected the bipartisan legislation to protect call center workers in Texas and throughout the country, and American consumers from unfair treatment.
The Bill requires the Secretary of labour to “maintain a publicly available list of all employers that relocate a call centre overseas, to make such companies ineligible for federal grants or guaranteed loans, and to require disclosure of the physical location of business agents engaging in customer service communications, and for other purposes.”
The Bill, which has been referred to four different House committees after its introduction on Thursday, would also require the foreign call centres to comply with the request of American consumers to be transferred to a service agent physically located within the United States.
“Our number one priority in Congress is protecting and creating American jobs,” said Republican Congressman McKinley from West Virginia. “Plain and simple, we should not be rewarding companies for moving jobs offshore.”
“This Bill does not mandate that companies keep call centers here in America, but simply says if you move call centre jobs offshore, you don’t receive funding from the government,” he said, adding, “This should be common sense.”
The two lawmakers also spoke of the “dismal” labour conditions and low wages paid to workers at the foreign call centres over the past decade that has reportedly seen a steady increase in companies relocating their service jobs overseas.