I find it utterly disgusting that Bank of America, and several other large U.S. banks, have outsourced jobs overseas while sticking their hand into the American piggy bank. Bank of America has done this for some time, utilizing companies that go by names like TeleTech, providing customer service over the telephone. Yep, when Bank of America customers call the bank to replace a debit card, get a balance, open a new account, or ask about that $35 overdraft charge, chances are good that one is not even speaking with a Bank of America employee! Yet this person has all of your personal information at their fingertips. Bank of America can't be bothered to talk to you, and has hired various companies to solve your problem and make you go away.
While Bank of America does employ customer service agents, the Teletech's of the world carry out the bank's customer service at a substantial cost savings. Bank of America pays their customer service agents upwards of $15 per hour, acceptable when considering the level of training and access to knowledge and information critical to providing customer service for a bank. Outfits like Teletech pay between $9 - $10 per hour to provide the same, but experience high turn-over.
Here's where I come unglued, both as Bank of America customer and U.S. taxpayer. I find it astonishing that when one uses the online live-chat feature of the Bank of America website, I'm chatting LIVE with a CONTRACTOR in INDIA, complete with broken English and typos (when a cut an paste answer just won't do). Spanish your native language? Call Bank of America and you may be speaking with a CONTRACTOR in MEXICO. The Guadalajara, Mexico call center for Bank of America outsourced and operated by Teletech pays its customer service employees $3 per hour. They work six days a week, 12 hours a day, with no benefits. They know your balance.
The December 12, 2008 New York Times said Bank of America is laying off over 30,000 people. Did they suddenly find a way to provide banking services that require less human capital? Nope. They're turning over the work to CONTRACTORS at lower pay in far flung corners of God's green Earth.
So, as Bank of America's CEO wipes the sweet taste of the American Treasury off his lips, we can all rest assured that while the bank puts Americans with good paying jobs on the street it has replaced them with contract workers in a foreign land - at Taxpayer expense. That's a piece of my mind.
4 comments:
Well, I gotta say, I think there are several issues at play here. First of all, a company that holds our private financial information has strong obligations to protect that information.
In terms of off-shoring in and of itself, however, I think the problem isn't sending jobs overseas, but rather the unequal distribution of the benefits. The problem with our current form of capitalism is that it is stripping wealth from the middle class and funneling it to the wealthiest one percent. Capitalism is supposed to benefit the owners of the capital, but in our version, it has come to benefit those who manage the capital.
Up til now, the owners of the capital were happy to let managers benefit because they believed they were profiting from the run-up in stock price values. However, when those vanish, they find they no longer own anything of value, and what real value their capital had was stripped away by irresponsible and overpaid management.
It used to be that banks were not allowed to cross state lines. Then, in the 90s, those rules were relaxed and the large national banks began to form through mergers and acquisitions. That's why we have the mess we have now. The whole concept of "too big to fail" was a moot point not even 20 years ago.
If we outsourced jobs and the lower cost of providing services was passed on to consumers, that would be a good thing. If we taxed these companies appropriately who shipped these jobs overseas, we could provide job training. If we didn't allow banks to become so large to begin with, we'd have larger local banks who would need to hire more local people and who would benefit less from outsourcing. Its all tied together in a very vast and complicated web, but it can be summed up very easily with the simple statement that power should never become too centralized, whether you're talking political power, religious power or economic power.
I'm sure feeling the way you do about this horrible company you have closed all of your accounts and have made the decision not to do any business with them or any company that they are affiliated with!
After all who could just sit back and demand change without making the effort or sacrifice of being part of it!
Thank God we have people like you who actually take action and not just sit at home complaining on a blog.
You stupid fuck, we work 5 days a week, $48 pesos for hour, with benefits. Do some more research before posting your stupid toughts...
well, fucking gringo if you don´t like foreigners answering phones or assisting you get people in the US to work for $4.20 dollars an hour (48 Mxn pesos)for your information such a salary is one of the best for this kind of work in Mexico and Costa Rica, here agents make three times as much as many Mexicans...also we do enoy benefits as medical insurance granted by the Federal government, subsidized housing by the federal government who grants mortgage loans for homes, and we enjoy Christmas bonuses by law.
Post a Comment