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In December 2011 we
reported on a federal bill that would make companies that
relocate call centers to locations outside of the United States
ineligible for federal grant or guaranteed loan programs for five
years. Under this bill (the
U.S. Call Center and Consumer Protection Act , HR 3596), any
company that (1) employs either 50 or more full-time call center
employees, or 50 or more call center employees who work at least
1,500 aggregate hours per week (excluding overtime) and (2) closes
a call center or ceases the operations of at least 30 percent of a
call center's call volume and relocates those operations to a
location outside of the United States, must provide at least 120
days' notice to the Secretary of Labor prior to any such
relocation. The Act would require the Secretary of Labor to
maintain a publicly available list of these companies, and any
company on this list would be ineligible for any direct or indirect
federal grants or guaranteed loan programs for a period of five
years from when they were added to the list.
In recent months, several states have introduced their own bills
with similar provisions. New Jersey A 2651 provides that an employer
that relocates a call center to a foreign country must notify the
state's Labor Commissioner at least 120 days before the
relocation, will be ineligible to receive state government grants,
loans, or tax breaks, and must remit any unamortized grant, loan or
tax break back to the state. The bill provides a penalty of $10,000
for each day that a company fails to complete the notification.
This bill was approved by the New Jersey Assembly on March 15 and
sent to the Senate for review.
Arizona HB 2733 contains similar provisions
regarding notification and ineligibility for state government
grants and loans. It also would require that the director of each
state agency ensures that all call centers related to state
business and all customer service work be performed by state
contractors entirely within the state. This bill has not been voted
on. Two similar bills in Florida (SB 678 and HB 649) were introduced late last year.
Senator Chris Smith, sponsor of SB 678, stated that the bill was
approved unanimously by the Senate but was held up in the House. It
appears unlikely to pass this term.
The federal call center bill, HR 3596, seems to be gaining
support. It now has a reported 94 co-sponsors, including seven
Republicans, although it has not been voted on. The bill's
sponsor stated that the U.S. has lost at least 500,000 call center
jobs over the last four years as those positions were moved
offshore. Call centers represent about 3 percent of the U.S.
workforce, according to the Communications Workers of America, the
union that supports the bill.
Congress briefly considered a bill, called the Outsourcing
Accountability Act of 2012 (HR 3875), that would have amended federal
securities law to require public companies with revenues of more
than $1 billion to disclose, in their annual filings, employment
numbers by U.S. and foreign (by country) jurisdictions. Currently,
public companies are only required to disclose total employment
numbers without distinguishing between the U.S. and other
countries. The House of Representatives voted down this bill in
early March 2012.
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