Show some respect for call centers

FOR an industry that has come from having almost no economic impact over a decade ago to now employing nearly 700,000 Filipinos, the Philippine call-center business continues to be disparaged and criticized.

For 2014, Philippine call centers will bring well over $10 billion into the nation’s economy. The average call-center employee is responsible for substantially more economic activity on a per-capita basis than an overseas worker. The money to initially fund a call center is virtually all foreign direct investments. This business has proven to be sustainable with a strong growth record, and the economic impact has been felt all over the country.

Yet, there are those who continue to whine that this industry is no substitute for “industrialization” and merchandise exports.

A frequent argument is that the call centers do not provide employment for the poor and uneducated. This is a “red herring” illogical fallacy.

There are some 1,000 call centers around the Philippines. Each building housing a call center required highly educated employees like engineers, as well as many “poor and uneducated” laborers. Tens of millions of pesos of wages have been paid to workers of all economic classes before a single call- center agent is hired.

Once a center is opened, many jobs for noncollege-educated people open up to support the operation. Further, many of the college-educated agents formally worked at the local fast-food restaurant left that position, creating a job opening for someone without a degree. There has been a substantial employment-multiplier effect.

All the work-product from the call centers is exported. Unlike manufacturing, these centers cannot be closed down and moved quickly. In 2012 it took Ford Motor Co. just 30 days to shut down its factory in Laguna province. It usually takes three months just to train a call-center agent at nearly a P100,000 investment.

Certainly, the Philippines needs to improve its manufacturing base and capabilities but that should not in any way detract or overshadow our important job-creating services export industry.

There are those that would prefer we were back in the days of manufacturing sport shoes with our poor and uneducated, making sure each box contained a set of shoelaces. But those times are over. In fact, the total global athletic-footwear market is expected to reach $85 billion by 2018. The global call-center business is expected to reach $338 billion by 2018, and the Philippines has the best and the largest call-center industry on the planet.

In a sense, this industry grew as money, sometimes smarter than we mortals, saw a solid and enduring investment opportunity when the first center was set up in 1999 at the Clark Freeport Zone in Pampanga province.

Perhaps, the only way to make people respect this important industry is it put up a fake smokestack above each call center and describe it as an “outsourcing factory.” — The BusinessMirror Editorial