JEFFERSON CITY - The next time you call a Missouri agency's customer service line, that call could be answered halfway around the world. That practice would be banned, under a bill heard before a House committee Tuesday.
Rep. David Pierce, R-Warrensburg, said the state should not be spending taxpayers' money on companies who move their call centers to foreign countries.
Pierce is sponsoring a measure to curtail the recent trend for corporations to outsource call center jobs overseas -- particularly to India. His bill would ban the state from contracting with companies who outsource call centers overseas, and put restrictions on Missouri's private companies use of such outsourcing as well.
Currently, if someone places a call to ask about Missouri's food stamp program, the person answering the phone is 8000 miles away in Bombay, India.
"It's hard to empathize with someone halfway around the world," Pierce told the House committee.
The state of Missouri contracted with a company called eFunds in 2001 to manage the state's Food Stamp Electronic Benefits Program. At the time, the company operated a call center in Wisconsin. A year later, however, that call center was moved to India.
"We should be using public money to create jobs, not to send them overseas," said Mark Franken, a lobbyist with the Communication Workers of America.
But the measure was greeted with skepticism by a number of the committee members, including chairman Rex Rector, R-Harrisonville.
"This sounds like a tariff to me," Rector said. "I'm hesitant to begin playing with the economy in this way."
Rep. Kevin Wilson, R-Neosho, said in an interview after the hearing that while he would like to see the state and its residents "choose American first," he was "not in favor of restricting free trade."
"We are a global economy," Wilson said. "Where would it stop? Would we say the state of Missouri could only buy Fords?"
Wilson said he was in favor of one of the bill's provisions -- to require those answering calls to identify themselves and where they are calling from, if asked.
"Everyone should have the right to at least know who they are talking to," Wilson said. He said Missourians could then decide for themselves whether they wanted to do business with a foreign call center.
The House research staff estimates it would cost the state at least an additional $500,000 each year if it could not contract with companies that outsource.
Rep. Jerry Bough, R-Nixa, said while outsourcing call center jobs overseas might appear to save the state money, he thought the cost to support those workers laid off in the form of welfare and unemployment insurance made Missouri's savings "appear bigger than it really is."
The committee did not vote on the legislation Tuesday.