While anti-government right-winger Rep. Steven Haugaard proposes big-government intrusion in family affairs, pragmatic Democratic House Minority Leader Jamie Smith proposes state government intervention in the global labor marketplace.
Rep. Smith proposes House Bill 1244, which would drop a little hammer on call centers that abandon South Dakota and its ideally bland-voiced operators. In ten sections of all-new statutory language, Rep. Smith proposes requiring any call center that intends to relocate its operations to a foreign country must notify the Secretary of Labor 120 days prior to such a move. Failure to provide that notification could incur a $10K fine per day.
The Secretary would compile and publish a semiannual list of call center abandoners. Listed businesses would be ineligible for any direct or indirect state grants or loans for five years after publication of the list. Listed leavers would also have to pay back “the amortized value of any grant, guaranteed loan, tax benefit, or any other governmental support it has previously received.” The Secretary of Labor could grant exceptions to those corporate welfare bans and clawbacks if the business can demonstrate that foregoing or forking back such government cash would threaten national security, result in substantial job loss in South Dakota, or harm the environment. (Yes, please, show me how excluding a call center will result in more poop in the Big Sioux River.)
Finally, HB 1244 requires the state to contract out any call-center and customer-service work exclusively to in-state businesses. Any current call contractors would have two years to move their operations to South Dakota.
I do like the idea of holding businesses receiving corporate welfare accountable. The whole (dubious) point of giving handouts to businesses is that they will alchemize those handouts into jobs and tax revenue here in South Dakota. If any businesses, call centers or otherwise, take our money and run to Djakarta, we should take that money back out of their hides, along with the interest those fly-by-nighters earned with it.
But naturally, HB 1244 is a good-government measure proposed by Democrats, so it still awaits placement on the House Commerce and Energy calendar. Hop to it, Chair Milstead! Let’s get HB 1244 on the docket, and let’s hear which call centers (and maybe other corporate welfare feeders) need to show a little more loyalty to the common good in South Dakota!
Employees at Mileage Plus in Rapid City figured it took about six months to grow a “Mileage Plus ass.” That’s the time it took to put on about 40 pounds, most of it bottom weight. The turnover in those places was pretty high (not sure what it is now) and about half the people hired are gone before they grew one half of that ass.
Call center jobs are mostly very bad jobs in the first place, not because the work is necessarily degrading, though being yelled at by irate customers isn’t fun, but because the supervisors and higher ups are not much different from overseers on slave plantations. Some of these places practically chain people to the phone, limiting bathroom breaks or even a short time to stretch. If the state is giving money for these plantation jobs, maybe they should regulate how they operate so that people can stay healthy, physically and mentally.
I wonder, Donald, which call centers and which contractors this bill might be targeting. I’m sure our debt collection program contracts out for calls. I wonder where those colors are sitting right now.
Donald’s point about the unpleasantness of working in call centers should make us wonder first why were subsidizing such a crummy jobs in the first place, and second weather representative Smithville might do better to target all industries that receive corporate welfare from the great state of South Dakota.
Why just a foreign country? I assume the incentives are solely for business within SD. If a center leaves for Alabama it’s the same affect as leaving for Ecuador. Leaving for Ecuador means less immigration to the US. Chew on that concept (Ecuador or Columbia would be the likely off-shore locations for SD call centers).
Most large call centers are outsourced, and most brick and mortar centers (around the world) are being replaced by work at home agents. Covid sped that migration up. Call Center agents can work anywhere anytime they want. In most countries. It’s called the “cloud”. What I mean to say is this House Bill is outdated and impractical. It’s based on some George W Bush idea of business modeling. And call center jobs are not all bad jobs..many are well paid with benefits. Not everyone at the center is on the phones ( I have worked in this business for a looooong time). The money you may fine these companies would be recovered within a few months if outsourced to Columbia, and the money they initially got from you was allocated to capital not labor, so you’ll just end up with old servers and desktops..again..the “cloud”. And btw, unlike meatpacking plants Call Centers rarely kill their employees.
Ask lobbyist Murphy about the unpleasantness of running Milage-plus, his old carousing grounds. Just call centers, seems suspect. How about fish farms, packing plants, corporate mines, farms and ranches stripping water rights. Oops. No more DENR!
Another creative job appears to be this guy who wears the stars and strips Punisher cap logo w/the M-4 assault rifle as the arrested “flex cuff guy” did, prowling the Senate gallery 1.06.21 in full fatigues and body armor. These military wannabes may be dangerous, like in this secluded outpost above Deadwood. Rally militia recruitment?https://www.newscenter1.tv/deadwood-retreat-center-offers-getaway-space-for-veterans-first-responders/
Jim, I’ll roll with portions of your analysis and suggestions. Yes, HB 1244 seems strangely narrow, targeting only one industry and only one form of offshoring. Jobs moved out of state have the same negative impact on South Dakota’s employment, income, and tax revenues whether the jobs move to Minnesota or Malaysia. If those jobs leave, they no longer serve the purpose for which the employer might have been given South Dakota tax breaks or other forms of corporate welfare.
Maybe Representative Smith is simply offering a clever hoghouse vehicle to get people talking about the primary underlying concepts.
But as I think about it, maybe South Dakota doesn’t have to worry about call centers moving their jobs to other states. Maybe we already are the low-wage mecca of the lower 48. Maybe once a company has already moved its jobs to low-wage South Dakota, the only way to cost labor costs further is to move operations to another Third World country. Maybe the market has already defined the problem in Smith’s narrow terms of South Dakota vs. foreign labor pools?
It was amazing that the South Dakota GFP awarded a major recreation / tourism contract to a Florida company. Florida?! The contract combined purchase processes for camping, fishing, hunting permits & licenses. The Florida company promised to ’employ South Dakotans’ (think call center minimum wages), while yet the profits will flow to Florida.
It appears too bad that South Dakota lacks universities training graduates in computer science, tourism marketing, and business that could contract for such a business. https://www.keloland.com/news/capitol-news-bureau/sdgfp-is-merging-customer-commerce-services/
A Teacher’s Writes
by Geoffrey Sheehy
A pool of preserved bison meat
Pekka Hamalainen’s Lakota America:
In the winter of 1703, [a] … lake’s ice coat had collapsed under a buffalo herd and then hardened again to seal the drowned animals in, leaving Sicangus a huge natural refrigerator …. for an entire year. A Sicangu winter count remembered it as “Camped cutting the ice through winter.”
Life in South Dakota! Nature. Extraordinary! GFP’s tourism palace in west RC doesn’t mention this bit of bison history (while white South Dakota awarded recreation / tourism contract to a Florida company … for camping, fishing, hunting permits & licenses.)