Posted on 05/29/2012 12:26:02 PM PDT by Theoria
Your account information will now be accessible to call center workers in the Philippines.
Bank of America, which last fall announced plans to lay off 30,000 workers, is about to go on a hiring spree—overseas.
America's second-largest bank is relocating its business-support operations to the Philippines, according to a high-ranking Filipino government official recently quoted in the Filipino press. The move, which includes a portion of the bank's customer service unit, comes less than three years after Bank of America received a $45 billion federal bailout.
Roman Romulo, deputy majority leader of the Philippine House of Representatives, bragged to the Manila Standard Today earlier this month that the Philippines "has secured its place as the world's fastest-growing outsourcing hub." Romulo pointed out that BofA is the last of the "big four" US banks to move their business-support network to his island nation, where the average family makes $4,700 a year.
A spokesman for Bank of America, Mark Pipitone, was unable to provide additional information about the bank's offshoring plans on Friday. "We have employees and operations where we can ensure that we best serve our customers and clients," he told me in an email.
The bank's outsourcing comes amid rising concerns about the security of customers' financial data in the hands of foreign contractors. In March, undercover reporters for England's Sunday Times met in India with "IT consultants" who claimed they were call center workers and offered to sell them credit card and medical information for 500,000 Britons—including account holders at major banks such as HSBC.
To prevent similar scandals from rocking the Philippines, Romulo is pushing a law that would require Filipino companies to "protect the integrity and confidentiality of any personal information collected from their clients, in compliance with international privacy standards," according to the Filipino television network ABS/CBN News.
US banks already are operating call centers in the Philippines, "despite the fact that they haven't actually passed this rudimentary legislation," says Shane Larson, legislative director for the Communication Workers of America (CWA), which represents 150,000 American call center workers. The Indian government is ahead of the Philippines in passing data privacy laws, notes the union, but those laws specifically exempt the call center industry. And that could lead to problems: In a 2005 survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers, 85 percent of the Indian outsourcing companies that responded said they had experienced information security breaches in the previous year.
In a 2010 report on the offshoring of technical jobs, New York's Department of Labor concluded that data security in the medical and financial fields is "of critical concern" and that "other nations' legal systems (especially in developing countries such as India) require reform to match that of the US with respect to privacy and computer security."
Needless to say, the outsourcing is bad news for an already hurting US call center industry, which has shed some 500,000 jobs during the past four years—about 10 percent of the total. The CWA hopes to reverse this trend by pushing the US Call Center and Consumer Protection Act, a bill that would make any company that outsources call center jobs ineligible for federal loans and grants.
In recent years, local governments in the deindustrializing Midwest have tried to boost their economies by luring call centers with generous tax breaks and economic incentives. T-Mobile, for instance, accepted more than $61 million in state and local recruitment subsidies to locate call center jobs here. But it recently announced it would close seven American call centers, putting around 2,000 people out of work—even as it continues to operate centers in the Philippines and Honduras. (The CWA called the company out in a recent report titled "Why Shipping Call Center Jobs Overseas Hurts Us Back Home.")
In addition to the "frustrations" of dealing with customer-service workers halfway around the globe, "there is the bigger picture of how opaque the process is, and, as a result, some of the security questions that are raised," says Larson of the CWA. "I think Americans deserve to know to whom they are speaking and to where their information is going."
Why would you say that? Tens of thousands of people would have lost their jobs.
Bank of America was forced into that Merrill Lynch deal. When the head of the bank, under oath, admitted they were forced by the Obama administration the White House went into orbit and vowed revenge. Who's side are you on?
It's not 'their' job. No one is entitled to a job. It's the companies.
As for BoA, they issued credit cards to illegals, they gave out mortgages like candy, they purchased ML[That deal was under Bush, not Obama], they are insolvent.
The market would have finished off their inefficiency, now they are larger and have more contagions. You and I will end up paying for their demise.
I'm on the side of free markets and against regulatory capture and crony capitalism. The Gov't 'picked' them as a winner and have 'loaned' out money to them, without any Constitutional authority. They have favored banks, while letting other businesses fail.
What makes you think the BoA jobs migrating to the PI are the high paying ones? Call centers? What a shame, Susie won’t aspire to a career goal of working in a BoA call center. Maybe she’ll have to consider another career choice.
Jobs overseas create wealth for America.
You misunderstand me, I didn’t say these were high paying American Style jobs. But they ARE/WERE jobs that were being done by Americans. Considering the dearth of jobs available for they former BofA workers to apply for then the likelihood is that they will not be working for some time to come and may end up on Welfare.
Also my own cousin who was a Manager for BofA had to train her Indian replacement before being shown the door and she wasn’t running a call center either. Her odds of getting a job with comparable pay is nil. Especially since she too is in her 50’s.
As she told me “Someday these jobs might come back. But the pay being offered will be nowhere near what they are getting now. And they will have takers for those jobs because hungry people will work for peanuts if that is a an improvement over their current situation.
Now don’t get me wrong, these are prudent business decisions. But they are SHORT TERM business decisions and will help the short term bottom line. But Americans for too long have been looked upon as the cash-cow of the world. Once the GOOD/average paying jobs are GONE then whose citizens overseas is going to be the cash-cow? Who here in America is going to buy the products made overseas? Welfare recipients using government dollars borrowed from other countries at soon to be exorbitant interest rates? What happens when those borrowed dollars aren’t available either? Few or perhaps no Jobs and no Welfare dollars, that makes a bad combination if you ask me.
If businesses and government don’t start looking at the LONG-TERM effects of their decisions then when those effects slam them in the face, they should not be surprised that short-term fixes won’t work anymore either.
My statement upon further perusal did not state the BOA employees belonged to any union.
I wish your cousin well.
Maybe this is not a life loss for her, but a life opportunity.
Juliette Gordon Low, broken hearted, started Girl Scouts when she was 52,
Clara Barton started the American Red Cross when she was in her 50’s.
I, broken hearted, started a new family with 2 adopted kids.
Tell your cousin we all start over again every day
Too many of us are sleep walking through a mindless routine until we get a wake up call. .
Dont sleep-walk through another 40 years. Follow her heart. It will lead her.
and for the rest of it, read Harry Dent “The Great Crash Ahead” for what his demographic research suggests for the future of the world and US economy and society.
Bad times for many, opportunity for others. he may not be right about everything he predicts but... demography is destiny.
The growth in the population and wealth of the former 3rd world does not have to be a loss for America. Just another opportunity for those willing to take a shot at it.
How many buggy whip makers committed suicide when Henry Ford invented the first mass produced auto?
How many steam ship lines went belly up when Pan Am begin to fly passengers across oceans?
Who misses them?
Mother Thersa began hee missionary work at age 38
Jesus Christ began his at age 30 and died at about age 32
If your cousin looks around, there are kids in her neighborhood who cannot read or do math. She could help.
There are missions that need helpers. Yes it starts for free, but then where does it go? To a new purpose for her life? What is that worth?
I wish your cousin well.
Maybe this is not a life loss for her, but a life opportunity.
Juliette Gordon Low, broken hearted, started Girl Scouts when she was 52,
Clara Barton started the American Red Cross when she was in her 50’s.
I, broken hearted, started a new family with 2 adopted kids.
Tell your cousin we all start over again every day
Too many of us are sleep walking through a mindless routine until we get a wake up call. .
Dont sleep-walk through another 40 years. Follow her heart. It will lead her.
and for the rest of it, read Harry Dent “The Great Crash Ahead” for what his demographic research suggests for the future of the world and US economy and society.
Bad times for many, opportunity for others. he may not be right about everything he predicts but... demography is destiny.
The growth in the population and wealth of the former 3rd world does not have to be a loss for America. Just another opportunity for those willing to take a shot at it.
How many buggy whip makers committed suicide when Henry Ford invented the first mass produced auto?
How many steam ship lines went belly up when Pan Am begin to fly passengers across oceans?
Who misses them?
Mother Thersa began hee missionary work at age 38
Jesus Christ began his at age 30 and died at about age 32
If your cousin looks around, there are kids in her neighborhood who cannot read or do math. She could help.
There are missions that need helpers. Yes it starts for free, but then where does it go? To a new purpose for her life? What is that worth?
Because unions have nothing to do with BoA offshoring the work that was up to now being done by Americans. You know that, right?
--Public-sector workers had a union membership rate (37.0 percent) more than five times higher than that of private-sector workers (6.9 percent). (See table 3.)
Freepers the union participation rate for the private sector is less than 7%. Commit it to memory.
Mother Jones is not a good source for facts let alone truth. They are a bunch of “long-haired, dope-smoking, maggot-infested, good time rock ‘n’ roll plastic banana FM types.” and proud of it.
Cool, you actually read the link.
Despite the globalist propaganda, union membership is not what is driving public sector work off-shore. It’s the lure of CHEAP labor. Marx would be delighted at ‘free traders’ speeding up the destruction of national boundaries and the onset of global communism by pursuing the unfettered movement of capital, freed from all political, national and religious shackles.
ca·nard [kuh-nahrd; Fr. ka-nar] Show IPA noun, plural ca·nards [-nahrdz; Fr. -nar] Show IPA. 1.a false or baseless, usually derogatory story, report, or rumor. 2.Cookery . a duck intended or used for food. 3.Aeronautics . a. an airplane that has its horizontal stabilizer and elevators located forward of the wing. b. Also called canard wing . one of two small lifting wings located in front of the main wings. c.an early airplane having a pusher engine with the rudder and elevator assembly in front of the wings.
so we can't even keep low paying jobs here in America now...
union membership of govt workers is ever increasing, since govt “work” is ever increasing....
private unions may be going, but the public ones are getting stronger and bolder...
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