US Airways Worker Tells Washington to Pass CWA Anti-Offshoring Bill

November 15, 2013

For Charlice Boston, getting a union job was a dream come true.

“A union job with decent pay and health insurance is not easy to find in Winston-Salem, N.C.,” she told reporters at a news conference for the CWA supported United States Call Center Worker and Consumer Protection Act of 2013.

Charlice works at a reservations center for US Airways, in a job that didn’t exist two years ago. But during that contract bargaining with US Airways, CWA said the company needed to end its offshoring of good jobs and in fact set a time-table under which all offshored work has now been returned to the United States. Which is great news for Charlice, who said, “The example of US Airways proves that bringing jobs back to the United States is a viable pathway.”

This CWA backed legislation would be an important step towards rebuilding our economy by: Improving job security for U.S. call center workers by ensuring that companies that ship call center jobs overseas can’t receive federal grants or guaranteed loans; Giving U.S. customers the right to know the real location of the customer service representative they’re talking to; and Giving U.S. customers the right to request to be transferred to a customer service agent physically in the U.S.

Senator Bob Casey (D-PA), a sponsor of the bill, said, “It’s important to provide disincentives so companies … might think twice or think three or four times before making a decision that will affect not just an individual family but an entire region.”

Join CWA’s fight against offshoring at www.pressoneforamerica.org.

Read CWA’s report on offshoring here.

Read News coverage here.