Gangs of New Jersey

Gangs of New Jersey - Part 12

Date: Thursday, April 24, 2003 11:11 AM

H-1B and JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER

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The New Jersey Star Ledger sounds very positive about the call center
jobs moving back to the U.S., but there is a caveat - the last part of
the article warns that Turner's anti-outsourcing bill could "hamstring
the state's flexibility to respond to future business conditions." They
endorse a sunset provision to weaken whatever bill might be approved.

http://www.nj.com/search/index.ssf?/base/bc/10510063256450.xml?jjournal?bc

Calls no longer routed to India

Tuesday, April 22, 2003

TRENTON (AP) - Residents who call a customer service center seeking
help with their electronic welfare and food stamp cards will no longer
be routed to a call center in India.

The state Department of Human Services and eFunds Corp. of Scottsdale,
Ariz., the company that processes the card system for 200,000 New
Jersey residents, have agreed to a deal that calls for a new center to
open in Camden within the next few days.

The monthly cost for running the center - whose 12 staffers will serve
English-speaking customers - will be $410,000, or about $74,000 more
than the current arrangement, Human Services spokesman Andy Williams
said yesterday. New Jersey's Spanish speaking clients will continue to
be directed to the company's Wisconsin center.

Workers at the Wisconsin center were paid $10 to $12 an hour, while
their counterparts in Bombay were paid the U.S. equivalent of $2 to $3
an hour.

http://www.nj.com/search/index.ssf?/base/news-1/1050993571142480.xml?starledger?oed

Bring state jobs home

Tuesday, April 22, 2003

It will cost a bit more, but New Jersey taxpayers will see a genuine
benefit from bringing customer-service jobs for the state's welfare
telephone help line back home.

Instead of using low-paid workers in India to handle questions from
200,000 welfare and food stamp recipients, a new customer service
center will open in Camden, employing about a dozen workers. That will
raise the monthly cost to operate the phone lines to $410,000, about
$74,000 more than the current cost of sending the calls overseas.

The difference, of course, is in the pay. Workers here will earn $12 an
hour or more. In India, they get just $2 to $3 per hour. Unlike the
private sector, the state has to be concerned with the broader costs
and benefits of these deals, not just the immediate bottom line.

This time the benefits to and of Camden outweigh the costs. Bringing
the work back to the Garden State provides a dozen new entry-level jobs
for the residents the phone line serves, the very people who need them
most as they strive for self-sufficiency. The local benefit is
multiplied because each person will spend their weekly salaries at the
local grocery store, the local car dealer and the local gas station.

State officials were angry when the phone service was shipped to Asia
from Green Bay, Wis., more than a year ago by the private contractor
that has the state business, eFunds Corp. of Arizona. But there wasn't
anything they could do about it until the contract came up for renewal
talks.

Legislators now want to make sure this does not happen again by passing
a law requiring workers on state contracts to be U.S. citizens or legal
aliens, unless they have a specialty for which American workers cannot
be found. The bill, sponsored by Sen. Shirley Turner (D-Mercer) passed
the Senate 40-0 but has bogged down in the Assembly.

Industry has lobbied hard against the measure, warning darkly that it
could start a trend among the states. The backlash might ignite trade
wars, even hurt the global economy.

This is hyperventilation. The biggest danger is a law that sounds good
but turns out to hamstring the state's flexibility to respond to future
business conditions. That might be avoided by forcing lawmakers to
revisit the issue on a regular schedule. A three-year sunset provision
in Turner's bill would make that happen.

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