A US lawmaker has reintroduced in the House of Representatives an anti-outsourcing legislation that seeks to bar American companies receiving federal grants and loans from sending call centre jobs to India and other foreign countries.
Congressman Tim Bishop from New York had made a similar effort in December 2011, but his move failed to advance at that time as the House leadership denied the Bill a floor vote even after it attracted co-sponsorship by as many as 135 lawmakers, both Democrats and Republicans.
Democrat Bishop’s new push has begun with a nominal co-sponsorship by five other lawmakers but it can gain traction as it goes along.
Asserting that the United States has lost more than 500,000 call centre jobs over the past five years, Bishop also cited a PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) study, singling out India’s “information security breaches”.
Called the “US Call Center and Consumer Protection Act of 2013”, Bishop’s legislation requires overseas call centre employees to disclose their location to US consumers and gives customers the right to be transferred to a US-based call centre upon request.
The Bill enjoins the Department of labor to track firms that move call centre jobs overseas and render them ineligible for any direct or indirect federal loans or loan guarantees for three years. A new provision in the updated version of the Bill would allow companies that return call centre jobs to the US to be restored to eligibility for taxpayer assistance.
“If you bet against US and outsource jobs, American taxpayers turn their back on you – it’s that simple,” said Bishop, asserting: “Our strong bipartisan coalition speaks with one voice: only good corporate citizens who grow jobs in US deserve taxpayer support.”
He alleged that call centre operations “are often outsourced to nations where lax security standards, unauthorised sub-outsourcing, and deceptive business tactics have exposed sensitive financial, medical, and other personal data of millions of Americans”.
Dwelling on the PWC study relating to India, Bishop said it found that 83 per cent of outsourcing companies in India surveyed by it had information security breaches during the previous year.