Imagine, if you will, that you have been offered a good-paying job in the call center of a prestige company that offers top-of-the-line training, benefits, security and unlimited opportunities for growth and advancement.
Imagine further that your job exists because another worker was fired from theirs, leaving them without a means to support themselves or their kids, no health insurance and no realistic prospects for the future.
Finally, imagine that your CUSTOMER is that worker, or a friend or relative of that worker.
So, when you sit down at your nice new desk and pick up your nice new headset, what would YOU expect to hear on the other end of your nice new telephone?
Does this sound like a nightmare scenario to you?
Well, consider this story, from diversityinc.com, about a Bombay labor lawyer, Vinod Shetty, who has formed a sort of trade association (called a “collective”) for call center workers:
Indian call-center workers regularly are subjected to verbal abuse from Americans. Workers say the tirades occasionally are racist and stem from anger over outsourcing. Now, many of these Indian workers are angry and have a very negative opinion of people from the United States. Vinod Shetty, a lawyer from Bombay who has formed a collective for call-center workers, says “a lot of trauma is caused” by the kinds of things these workers are hearing . . .
The San Francisco Chronicle ran a similar article last Thursday.
Urban legend has it that technology workers in India are among the best and the brightest in the world.
So, how can a cohort of suppposedly intelligent, well-educated people be unaware that their jobs and lifestyles exist at the expense of workers in the US, many of whom are equally if not better qualified?
How can they be unaware that their very CUSTOMERS are either struggling tech workers, or friends/family of the workers whose jobs have been shipped abroad?
I’m sorry, but I have no sympathy for Mr. Shetty’s clients.
As far as I’m concerned, they’re no better than the union-busting scabs of yesteryear.
Now, I have nothing against hard-working people – regardless of where they live – wanting to get an education and a good job.
If Indian Call Centers provide service to customers in their own country or anywhere else in the sub-Continent, God bless them and more power to them.
But when I pick up the phone to make a service call, I’d just as soon hear a technology worker in THIS country, MY country, answer it.
I don’t want MY money – the hard-earned cash I pay for product warranties – to be used by US executives to line their own pockets with wage differential largesse.
Let them find some other sucker to pay for their beachfront trophy homes.
I also don’t want my money used to involuntarily support hiring practices with which I strongly disagree.
In other words, same as buying hard goods, I want to have a choice when I purchase a service.
If Dell computer or any other firm I trade with would offer me that choice – say, asking me if I want to spend an extra $50* on warranty coverage to save a US job – that would be a whole different story.
For example, I’ve stopped patronizing retailers that depend on slave labor to make a profit. I can do that because I have a choice whether or not to buy an item with a “Made in China” label.
I would like that choice to be offered for services as well, including technical support.
You know what? That’s a great idea. Think I’ll send it along to Lou Dobbs.
*Indian call center workers make about 1/9 the wage of US workers in similar jobs. That’s a differential, with benefits, of about $24/hour. Thus, the extra $50 I propose spending would more than cover the cost of hiring an American worker to provide 2 hours of tech support per year, about twice as much as I normally use.