Customer Service Update

Ohio Lawmakers Introduce Bill to Revitalize Ohio Call Centers

Lawmakers from the Ohio Senate and Ohio House of Representatives joined with CWA members and local leaders for a press conference to highlight new state legislation that would stand up against the offshoring of call center jobs from Ohio.

Introduced in both houses of the state legislature, Senate Bill 156 would help revitalize the Ohio call center and customer service industry. The legislation would create a list of Ohio companies that offshore call center and customer service jobs to overseas locations and would deny these companies access to taxpayer dollars in any form. The bill also would require that all customer service and call center work done on behalf of the state of Ohio is done within the state.

Read more here.

Watch the press conference here.

Local 4322 call center worker Marvin Thompson speaks about the importance of job security.

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CWAers Fight for Call Center Jobs

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette featured an article on CWA workers' fight to protect call center jobs:

In 2013, AT&T shuttered facilities in Downtown and the Strip District that once employed more than 1,000 people. At the time, 225 people were laid off — many of them employees like Mary Lou Schaffer, who had put in 30 years at AT&T's Pittsburgh call centers.

Ms. Schaffer noticed call centers beginning to disappear in the 1990s. Jobs lost as centers closed were not replaced. And offices in other countries began popping up, she said.

"You started to piece it together," said Ms. Schaffer, who spent the last 10 years of her career as president of CWA Local 13550, which represented AT&T call center workers. "It's been my experience that they were slowly moving work overseas. Because today, that's what they do. That’s been their strategy all along."

The union also contends that competition with cheaper overseas labor has eroded the ability of workers to bargain for wages. Call center employees last year earned an average of $34,980 a year, or about $16.82 an hour, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Ms. Schaffer said call center jobs in the 1980s and 1990s paid as much as $30.65 an hour, or about $62,390 a year.

"The loss of these good-paying jobs with benefits certainly hurt the Pittsburgh area," said Ms. Schaffer, who now serves as executive secretary and treasurer for CWA Local 13500, which represents Verizon workers.

Read the full piece here.