Cheap Labor: U.S. Competes With India For Call Center Jobs

[OhioChick]

August 18, 2010

A big outsourcing company that does lots of work in India is looking to staff up in the U.S., where call center workers can now be hired on the cheap, the FT reports this morning.

People in the U.S. "are open to working at home and working at lower salaries than they were used to," Pramod Bhasin, chief exec of Genpact, tells the FT.

The firm plans to triple its U.S. workforce in the next two years — a plan rendered somewhat less impressive by the fact that it only has 1,500 employees in the U.S. right now.

Despite the relatively low number, there is something broader going on here: India is moving up the global pay-scale ladder, pushing outsourcing firms to look elsewhere for labor.

Wipro, an outsourcing company based in Bangalore, has been staffing up in Europe, the Middle East and Africa; roughly half of the firm's employees will be non-Indians in two years, up from 39 percent now, an exec tells the FT.


http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/08/18/129273964/cheap-labor-u-s-competes-with-india-for-call-center-jobs


U.S. Call Center Workers Now As Cheap To Hire As Their Indian Counterparts

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/18/us-call-centers-are-becom_n_686768.html

[Skittles]

1. I bet I know another reason they need more US people

non-stop complaints about offshore performance

[ihavenobias]

2. It's okay since we have such a low unemployment rate.

;)

[marmar]

3. A global race to the bottom.....and we're running at Usain Bolt-like speed.

nt

[katty]

4. WTO: one world, one plantation of happy slaves

[eilen]

5. Wouldn't it be ironic

if American call center employees were fielding calls from China and India? They will all bitch and complain that they can't understand the American accent.