Big Business moves Call Centers

Big company executive are always telling us that outsourcing jobs from the United States is a good idea. These are the same people that told us outsourcing our manufacturing infrastructure was a good idea. We were told that our manufacturing people couple be retrained to use computers and work in technology focused areas like call centers. Then, big business went to call centers, moving them to other countries.

Call centers being closed were in the rustbelt of the Midwest with average wages in the Wal-Mart range. They were closed because even though the cost of telecommunications was much higher transferring a call half way around the world, the total cost per call was drastically lowered. Why? People in India with masters degrees and experienced engineers were happy to make 20-30 thousand dollars a year. So the cost per minute in the US was between 30-80 cents a minute, while in India the cost per minute was well under .15 cents.

Here’s the question I would put to short sighted corporate America… Who’s going to buy your products after you destroy the middle class in America? You can talk all your want about competition and the need to lower rates in call centers and other such stuff. You never say tough how we Americans can compete with countries without our environmental laws, or labor laws, or higher tax rates, or slave labor wages in third world countries.

The reason why these people are willing to work for such a small wage is also the reason why we have problems with Mexican illegal immigration. But that’s another story