AAA relocating 200 IT positions to Arizona

The California State Automobile Association is moving 200 of its information technology jobs to a new call center in Arizona but has delayed further plans to relocate its remaining 1,000 San Francisco workers.

Last autumn, the association, a branch of the AAA travel and insurance club, announced plans to relocate most of its IT department out of state and shift most of its administrative operations to other parts of the Bay Area. AAA officials said now the 200 IT positions will be relocated to a new call center in Glendale, Ariz., that will open early this summer and eventually be manned by up to 1,400 workers.

What do I know? I was telling someone recently how 10 years ago a friend temping at an Intuit call center in Palo Alto saw their office close while the work was sent to Santa Fe. I knowingly announced that there was no way that would be happening now, that this would all have gone overseas since that was soooo long ago. Looks like I was way off base – there’s still jobs in call centers (and no doubt other similar types of commodity work) that is being re-sourced within the US.

I stand corrected. Or at least more informed.

In an article in the SF Chronicle, describing how Indian call-center workers suffer abuse, comes mention of

a new sitcom called ‘The Call Center,’ scheduled to air this winter on the leading channel NDTV, depict Westerners as arrogant, immoral and comically rude.

The show’s villain, the Indian manager of a call center, is an India-bashing blowhard, a disposition he picked up at an Ivy League business school in the United States.