Posted on 12/20/2018 9:19:45 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
A Mississippi company will open call centers in Baton Rouge and Bossier City to provide help-line services for the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services, a move that will create 240 jobs.
YoungWilliams PC said the Bossier call center will open in March, while the Baton Rouge location will begin operation sometime in the spring. Call center operations for DCFS had been outsourced to a private company operating in Florida and California.
The Baton Rouge call center will employ 160 people, and 80 people will work in Bossier. YoungWilliams will spend $4.1 million to open the facilities.
The Bossier call center will be in the Louisiana Boardwalk Outlets.
The Baton Rouge location will be announced at a later date, a press release from Gov. John Bel Edwards’ office said. But according to an advance notification submitted to Louisiana Economic Development by YoungWilliams for an Enterprise Zone tax incentive, the Baton Rouge call center will be at 11777 Industriplex Blvd. That’s the site of a former Capital One bank call center.
The jobs will have an average annual salary of $27,000, plus benefits, according to LED. The call centers will create 80 indirect jobs in metro Baton Rouge and 40 in Shreveport-Bossier, LED said.
Under the five-year agreement with DCFS, the LAHelpU call centers will field questions about child support enforcement, fraud and federal assistance programs that help low-income families with children, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and the Family Independence Temporary Assistance Program. The call centers started operations in 2012, when the state shut down some assistance offices.
Other state agencies may sign contracts with YoungWilliams for call center services.
LED offered YoungWilliams an incentive package that included the FastStart workforce training program.
The Enterprise Zone program that the company is expected to use is a jobs incentive program that provides Louisiana income and franchise tax credits to a new or existing business creating permanent net new full-time jobs, and hiring at least 50 percent of those jobs from one of four targeted groups. The benefit provides either a one-time $3,500 or $1,000 tax credit for each net new job created. There's also a rebate of state sales and use taxes paid on qualifying materials, machinery, furniture, and/or equipment purchased or a 1.5 percent refundable investment tax credit on the total capital investment, excluding tax-exempted items. The rebate can't exceed $100,000 per net new job.
Wonder what people who connect to one of those call centers will think since their brain was ready for an East Indian accent and they get a Cajun instead?? It wouldn’t bother me as I used to get that when calling construction site superintendents from about Houston and points east. It almost seemed to be a job qualification in that region.
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