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Posted on 04/03/2004 8:54:20 PM PST by coffeebreak
Gov. Ted Kulongoski would prefer Oregonians' questions about food stamps and welfare benefits not be answered by workers in India.
So he's asking state agencies to avoid outsourcing work to foreign countries.
"If you're spending taxpayer dollars, you should spend the money to create jobs here in Oregon," Kulongoski spokeswoman Mary Ellen Glynn said this week, according to The Associated Press.
Drawing the governor's attention was a $24 million state contract with an Arizona-based company to administer the new Oregon Trail debit card program that disburses food stamps and welfare payments.
As part of the contract, the company, eFunds Corp., pays workers at call centers in India to take Oregonians' telephone inquiries about their monthly assistance payments.
Outsourcing -- shifting jobs overseas to take advantage of lower labor costs -- has become a hot topic in the presidential election. Democrat John Kerry has pledged to end tax loopholes that encourage the export of jobs, while President Bush has supported outsourcing as good for an economy that values innovation.
The practice began in manufacturing, migrated to service jobs and some white-collar jobs such as accounting and now has seeped into government. Welfare recipients in Georgia, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, among other states, have discovered their questions being answered in India.
Legislators in 29 states, including Washington, have proposed bans on state contracts with foreign call centers, according to the National Foundation for American Policy. Officials in New Jersey responded to protests there by persuading eFunds to relocate welfare customer-service jobs from India to Camden, N.J.
Oregon's 10-year contract with eFunds is thought to be the only one in the state's government that uses services outside the country, said Mike Beard, a spokesman for the Oregon Department of Administrative Services.
Beard said public information officers for state agencies discussed the contract during a meeting Friday "and nobody knows of any other contract anywhere."
The federal government lacks good data on the prevalence of outsourcing. But according to economists at the University of California at Berkeley, U.S. firms sent nearly 30,000 service-sector jobs to India last July while eliminating 226,435 in the United States.
One estimate suggests that about 250,000 U.S. jobs will be lost to global outsourcing each year through 2015, although some economists consider that figure too low.
For now, Oregon officials say the Indian customer-service reps are doing a good job.
"We get fewer complaints than when these calls were handled in the United States," said Jim Sellers, spokesman for the state Department of Human Services.
The Associated Press and Dave Hogan of The Oregonian staff contributed to this report.
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