At 11:48 PM 3/19/2004, you wrote:
Mentioned by Jay Leno in his monologue tonight: calls from welfare recipients in Utah to the state office are being answered in India . . .
<<http://www.sltrib.com/2004/Mar/03172004/business/148517.asp>>
-- Ronn! :)
Same here in PA. I don't recall the Department, but it could have been for Labor & Industry, Welfare, or the higher education assistance group.
Err, oh, I just got the relevance of doing it for the welfare office.
<ring-ring>
"Yes, my name is Chandra, how may I help you?"
"Hi, I'm calling from Provo to check on my state benefits which I need because I got laid off a year ago and haven't been able to find a job anywhere in Utah."
"I'm sorry to hear that. I, too, was looking for work until I got hired for this job last week in New Dehli . . . "
(No aspersions meant toward Ritu or anyone else from India. Just a comment on the irony of hiring people in another country -- or even another state -- to take calls from people who are out of work because no one is hiring locally.)
Last year, officials in Indiana came under heavy criticism when it was disclosed that the state's Department of Workforce Development, responsible for helping unemployed workers find jobs, had hired a company based in India to do $15.2 million worth of computer upgrades to speed the handling of unemployment claims. Gov. Joe Kernan announced in November that that contract had been canceled.
One presumes that in that case it might be possible that there were not enough unemployed IT people in Indiana who have the necessary technical skills that they could have hired locally. However, that reasoning probably wouldn't apply to phone people. In fact, when I was living out there back in the 80s I met people who worked for the unemployment office (called the "Job Service" office, at least in those days) in Utah who said they got that job after getting laid off, going to the office to apply for benefits and look for a new job, and eventually, after they couldn't find anything else, they ended up getting a job working for Job Service as a client counselor. I don't know how common that is, but at least a person like that would know what the clients they are helping are going through . . .
-- Ronn! :)
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