More Indians To Lose Jobs? Committee Urges Donald Trump To Bring Back Call Center Jobs To America

BPOs and call centers in India may be heading for trouble.

A workers’ committee in America has requested U.S. President Donald Trump to bring back outsourced call center jobs back to America.

In a letter to Donald Trump, the Communications Workers of America (CWA) stated that numerous security breaches at overseas call centers have led to personal information of Americans being compromised, leaving customers open to fraud. Additionally, workers trained at overseas call centers have gone on to use this training to engage in scams targeting U.S. citizens.

In October 2016, the U.S. Department of Justice released an indictment against a group of perpetrators operating out of an Indian call center whose “enormous and complex fraud scheme resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in victim losses from over 15,000 known victims” in America.

The CWA, led by senators Bob Casey, Tammy Baldwin, Joe Donnelly, Heidi Heitkamp, Joe Manchin, and Claire McCaskill, has urged the Trump Administration to take action to help protect and bring call center jobs back to the U.S., noting that besides posing a threat to American people, the industry had lost hundreds of thousands of jobs over the past decade due to offshoring.

“The U.S.-based call centers not only provide American jobs and high-quality customer service, these facilities typically have more robust security measures to protect personal data,” the letter stated.

Besides bringing back manufacturing jobs, Donald Trump should also put an end to offshoring and bring back jobs pertaining to customer service, the committee stated.

“We appreciate your comments on bringing back to the United States jobs that have been offshored. We are writing today to strongly encourage you to not only focus on bringing back manufacturing jobs, but service sector jobs as well; in particular customer service and call center jobs. We urge you to take executive action and to support legislation to help protect and bring call center jobs back to the United States,” the workers committee stated in its letter to Donald Trump.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, between 2006 and 2014, the U.S lost over 200,000 call center jobs. At the same time, offshore call center jobs servicing the U.S. have skyrocketed. Call center and customer service jobs can offer the opportunity for good jobs for many Americans, the letter stated.

“Call center and customer service jobs can offer the opportunity for good jobs for many Americans. In many of our communities, as many of the manufacturing jobs were shipped overseas, an influx of call centers offered hope for workers who lost their jobs. Their pain has been compounded when call centers move overseas as well,” the committee stated in its letter to Donald Trump.

“We urge you to issue an Executive Order to stop federal government contracts from going to companies that send call center jobs overseas. This step would send a clear message to companies that they should create jobs here and not in other countries. This is an especially important when these companies are benefiting from taxpayer-funded contracts. Another step that can be taken is to legislatively target federal grants and loans for companies that offshore call center centers and also give consumers the right to know if they are speaking with an offshore customer service representative and allow them to talk to an agent in the U.S. instead. We hope this approach would also have your support.”

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— Danny ??MAGA (@TrumpGirlMAGA) January 29, 2017

Many American communities have committed millions in taxpayer dollars to fund incentives for companies opening customer service/call center jobs in their communities. However, the last decade has seen many of those jobs shipped overseas. Companies pocketed taxpayer dollars but offshored the call center jobs just a few years later, the letter to Donald Trump stated.

In December, Donald Trump met industry leaders from Facebook, Apple, and PayPal to discuss the future of jobs in America.

[Featured Image By Evan Vucci/AP Images]