Wall Street Journal (May 26)
“Phoenix built an empire of cubicle jobs.” By population, Phoenix “is currently the nation’s fifth-largest city” and, at least for now, “the country’s call-center capital.” But Artificial Intelligence is currently “piling on offshoring losses, decimating careers that were once a sure path to the middle class.” In 2021, the city’s “customer-service workforce” peaked at 92,970. By 2025, it had tumbled to 68,930 and the precipitous drop looks likely to continue, though typically not through mass layoffs. “Instead, companies have taken advantage of the industry’s high churn, cutting head count by not replacing workers who quit or were fired.”
Tags: AI, Call-center capital, Careers, Churn, Cubicle jobs, Customer service, Decimating, Largest, Losses, Mass layoffs, Offshoring, Peaked, Phoenix, Population, Precipitous, Tumbled, Workforce
LA Times (May 7, 2013)
“The deaths of more than 600 garment workers in Bangladesh’s Rana Plaza factory collapse April 24 is a tragedy that highlights widespread problems in the global apparel industry. But will it be the spark that finally leads to much-needed global reforms?” Not until we quit looking for smoking guns and, instead, look in the mirror. Only then, will we see “the real culprits: the global apparel industry and ourselves for being complicit in supporting or ignoring a system of trade and offshoring largely designed to bypass regulatory policy of every stripe, while putting maximum profit before people.”
Tags: Apparel industry, Bangladesh, Garment workers, Offshoring, People, Profit, Reforms
