By Justin Schneider, Herald Bulletin Staff Writer
September 24, 2008 09:50 pm
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ANDERSON — Even more central Indiana residents will soon get paid to talk on the phone.
On Wednesday, Manpower announced plans to bring 300 call-center jobs to Daleville. Few details were provided, but the entry-level positions are expected to pay around $10 an hour.
It marks the fifth such announcement for east-central Indiana in the past 33 months. Rob Sparks, executive director of the Anderson-based Corporation for Economic Development, said the growth of call centers is the result of both outsourcing and the return of domestic customer service.
“A lot of call center jobs are being created by contracting jobs that used to be done internally,” Sparks said. “There is also a shifting of jobs coming back from overseas, so it’s a two-fold shift in how call centers are managed.”
Last spring, IBM announced plans to create a new Daleville call center and fill it with 500 jobs. It appears that Wednesday’s announcement will enable the company to reach that number, as the call center already employs 200.
Student loan giant Sallie Mae set off a string of call-center announcements in February 2006 when it unveiled plans to hire up to 700 workers for a Delaware County call center. IBM followed in April 2007 and, by September, Dallas-based Affiliated Computer Services promised to create 500 jobs of its own at The Flagship Enterprise Center.
The most recent announcement came in May when Agape Communications launched a 400-worker call center for the Union Building in downtown Anderson.
In May, Affiliated announced that it was making steady progress with 348 employees on the job, and had recently added Verizon Wireless as a client.
“Last September, when we first opened our customer care center, we made a very large commitment to the city of Anderson,” said Greg Dodge, vice president of human relations for Affiliated. “Today, we’re here to celebrate that we’re way ahead of schedule on that commitment.”
The future of Agape, however, is cloudy. Employees were not paid for two weeks of work in August and September, leading several employees to walk out on Sept. 16 and prompting some to take legal action against the company.
Sparks said that because of its manufacturing base, central Indiana was priced out of the call center market. Now, the price is right, and negative reactions from consumers have brought many call center jobs back to the United States. Manpower reported that the new call center jobs will provide customer service for DVD players, plasma TVs and laptop computers.
“The upside is it’s a good opportunity to bring back some jobs, but we don’t want to build an economy around it,” Sparks said.
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