Kerry is on your side, Ann. "The New Republic"
SPEAKING FROM THE HEARTLAND
by Clay Risen
Candidate: John Kerry
Category: Domestic Policy
Grade: D
Last month John Kerry jumped on the anti-offshore outsourcing bandwagon by introducing his "Call Center Consumer's Right to Know" bill in the Senate. The bill would require that call center operators identify themselves and their location at the beginning of each call; as the bill's press release states, "There are more than 50,000 call centers in the United States and an estimated 6 million employees work in these centers. As companies move these operations abroad, many of these jobs are needlessly threatened at a time when we seek economic growth and job creation." The bill joins similar proposals in New Jersey and North Carolina, as well as a raft of anti-offshoring legislation across the country, at the federal, state, and local levels.
The stated intention of Kerry's plan may be simply to help consumers make "informed choices" about their call-center usage (whatever that means), but the practical implications are obvious and odious. As the National Foundation for American Policy notes in a recent study of anti-offshoring legislation, "[The bill] assumes that if Americans discovered they were speaking to foreigners they would either hang up the telephone or protest in another manner." The bill, in fact, does nothing to protect, let alone produce, jobs; all it does is foment an already strong wave of anti-foreign labor sentiment. But hey, there's nothing like a little reactionary nativism to kick off the holiday season.
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