Depending upon whose ox is being gored, sending American jobs to developing nations is either a sound practice that fosters free trade and corporate investment or a practice that sacrifices the livelihoods of Americans who have limited job skills.
The issue of sending jobs overseas hit home this week after a Deseret Morning News report revealed that a call center in India is fielding questions from Utah welfare recipients who have state-issued electronic-benefit cards. Some state officials are calling on Gov. Olene Walker to create a state policy on the practice.
This situation offers an inescapable irony. The Department of Workforce Services, the agency that oversees both public assistance programs and employment services, has contracted with American-based eFunds for $7.8 million over five years to handle inquiries about electronic-benefit cards issued to people who receive public assistance payments. EFunds, which operates hundreds of call centers, shipped the work overseas. There was no intent on the part of the Utah agency to directly outsource this work. That was eFunds' doing.
But imagine the dismay of someone on welfare, who is expected to enter the workforce after his or her cash benefits expire, learning that the very type of job for which he or she may qualify has been outsourced?
At least one state has pulled its contract with eFunds over these types of concerns, and others are considering legislation to prohibit agencies from sending jobs overseas. Still other states have set up their own call centers, employing welfare recipients to handle the calls.
Before Utah jumps into the policy-making fray, some difficult policy and philosophical issues need to be addressed.
Protectionist policies are an attractive quick fix, but there must also be some recognition that Utah operates in a global economy. Companies worldwide are competing for the best workers and highest revenues. Market forces will ultimately prevail.
American workers with little education or job training are vulnerable to these trends. Increasingly, the jobs of high-tech, medical analysis and financial services workers are threatened.
States and the federal government must craft policies that keep American workers and companies competitive. Much will depend on the nation's higher education system, which will need the resources to train people for jobs that cannot be readily outsourced and provide ongoing training and education to ensure the United States remains competitive in the global marketplace.
It's a tall order, considering that in the next decade Utah's system of higher education expects to add about 30,000 students to the 120,000 already attending nine public institutions. In recent years, students have shouldered an increasing amount of the state's colleges' and universities' operating costs in the form of tuition increases. The same has been true in other states, a phenomenon some pundits say is tied to the states' obligations to fund Medicaid.
It has long been understood that higher education is a ticket to higher earning potential over a lifetime. Now it must be understood that higher education will be necessary for obtaining a job of any sort, and that ongoing training will be required to keep those jobs in the United States among workers who are both innovative and highly productive.