Thursday, March 27, 2008
Yeetle Box - AT&T Breaks Pledge, Keeps Pledge to Shareholders
AT&T pledged in 2006 to bring back 5,000 customer service jobs to the U.S. from India, eliminating its low-wage foreign call centers. But CEO Randall Stephenson said this week he can't find enough skilled workers to fill the jobs. In a related move, AT&T is looking to revamp their recruitment strategies.
"We're having trouble finding the numbers that we need with the skills that are required to do these jobs," Stephenson told a business group in San Antonio. "Skills like talking and reading English are just not in abundance in the United States. In India, they speak and read English very well, and they just show up for work, and we don't have to pay overtime! Those are the skills we need to honor our pledge. Now, we did bring back 1,400 jobs by expatriation, so that's a promising business plan for the future."
Stephenson gave an especially candid speech, deploring the fact that the high school dropout rate is as high as 50% in some cities.
"If I had a business that half the product we turned out was defective or you couldn't put into the marketplace, I would shut that business down," he said. He added that his company can do work in Bangalore, India, just as easily as it could in the U.S. "With release," he muttered.
"I know you don't like hearing that, but that's the way it is," he said.
Right, Mr. Stephenson. You tell them. If YOU had a business that was 50 percent defective...You DO have a business that is 50 percent defective, you id–t. You can't even hire 5,000 people from the United States during a time of high unemployment, a banking crisis, a housing crisis, and an airline crisis. Workers have been displaced, let go, downsized. CALL THE FREAKIN' UNEMPLOYMENT OFFICES.
Perhaps Stephenson should consider this: AT&T only pays a $30,000 annual salary for those jobs. JESUS!