Thread: Florida food stamp jobs in India aggravate recipients

Florida food stamp jobs in India aggravate recipients, officials
By MICHAEL C. BENDER

Palm Beach Post Capital Bureau

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

TALLAHASSEE — After selling real estate for two decades in Palm Beach County, Michelle Brown picked up a baby-sitting job when the housing market tanked. Then the children's parents had their hours cut at work, so she turned to the state for help in buying food.

When Brown called the customer service line for the state's food stamp program, a phone rang in India.

"It's like a slap in the face," said Brown, 52, of Jupiter. "That's a job I'd be qualified for."

With unemployment at 9.4 percent in Florida and nearly 50,000 new applications for food stamps each month, the state has paid JPMorgan Chase nearly $50 million over the past three years to provide food stamp program services, which include customer service call centers in Bangalore and Gurgaon, India.

"She's got every right to be incensed," said state Rep. Juan Zapata, R-Miami, chairman of the House Human Services Appropriations Committee. "I can understand why she would feel that this is just not a good policy. We'll definitely look into it."

Spokesmen for Gov. Charlie Crist and Department of Children and Families Secretary George Sheldon declined a request for comment.

JPMorgan Chase, which also declined to comment, is facing criticism in Washington for reported plans to increase its use of India-based contractors by 25 percent. The company has received $25 billion from the federal Troubled Asset Relief Program.

U.S. Rep. Robert Brady, D-Pa., wrote a letter to JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, calling the reported expansion "outrageous."

A proposal from U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick, R-N.C., to ban government-funded banks from outsourcing new call center jobs to foreign-based companies has won House approval and is pending in the Senate.

"It's befuddling how some of these companies just don't get it," said Florida Senate Majority Leader Alex Diaz de la Portilla, R-Miami. "They don't understand the public is fed up with this kind of thing, with not being in touch with the real world."

Diaz de la Portilla led the charge this year to cancel a $500,000 contract that the state's tourism agency, Visit Florida, had with an out-of-state company to run its call center, saying the jobs should be in Florida.

"It's a shame, and I'm going to look into it," Diaz de la Portilla said Wednesday after being told of the food stamp program call centers. "We'll see if there's still time to do something this session."

Lawmakers are scheduled to finish their annual session May 1. The House and Senate are expected to approve competing budget proposals this week, both of which include money for the JPMorgan contract, and will start negotiating any differences over the weekend.

Legislative leaders were unsure what changes to the contract would be possible.

A DCF spokeswoman said the agency's five-year contract with JPMorgan runs through 2013. According to an online database of state contracts, Florida paid the company $12 million this year, $19 million in 2008 and $18.3 million in 2007 to run the program.

According to the department, JPMorgan handles a range of services for the Electronic Benefit Transfer program, including customer service and administration of the debit-type card that food stamp recipients use to buy groceries.

Calls about food stamp applications are handled by call centers in the state, but Floridians already in the program are processed through the two customer service centers in India, as well as one in Illinois and another in Ohio.

In February, the company's automated customer service center received 2.3 million calls, including 109,000 eventually answered by customer service representatives.

The department did not know how many out-of-state or overseas workers were paid by Florida's food stamp program. But a DCF spokeswoman said JPMorgan used a Tampa-based center to run food stamp programs for Florida and 27 other states.

State Rep. Mary Brandenburg of West Palm Beach, the top Democrat on the House Health Care Appropriations Committee, said all of the call center jobs should be filled by Floridians. She said outsourcing was "an example that privatization doesn't work well."

"We've got big call centers in the south end of Palm Beach County, and they're laying people off," Brandenburg said. "Why don't we give the jobs to people in Florida and save those jobs?"

Relocating the call center jobs to Florida could reduce the unemployment rate and the number of residents on food stamps, she said.

"They'll be paying taxes, making their mortgage payments and spending money in the community," Brandenburg said. "Every Floridian should be irate about this."

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http://www.palmbeachpost.com/politic...amps_0416.html

Oh, but then our global brothers and sisters wouldn't have a job and we know they deserve it more than us because as Americans, we've just had it too good for too long. You know, greedy, arrogant people that we are. Till we're selling our kids off and selling our organs, and starving in the streets, we won't be "equal".

EXCUSE ME, WERE SUPPOSED TO GIVE OUR PERSONAL DATA TO SOME ONE OVERSEAS?

DOES ANYONE REALIZE HOW WRONG THIS IS?

Alot of our personal data is already overseas......but it sure makes you wonder just how really concerned about the American people these places are. Ripe for the taking for ID fraud, and we just hand it over.

Paidmytaxes, this is only one instance. Some payrolls for large companies and state governments are being processed in India. And some medical billing for hospital systems is being done there, plus I read that one medical system, suffering from severe financial problems, was thinking about getting rid of some of their doctors, transmiting test records to India for analysis by cheaper doctors. And I am sick of Microsoft's help line always ending up in India, where I end up talking to Jimmy, Joe or Frank. (Yeah, right!)

And these b*st*rds Got TARP money!!!

That was one of the rules that Americans got the jobs first!

This is the exact problem with this country right now.

We need a president that has some balls and corrects the error of the previsous presidents ways. We need manufacturing brought back and we need to start being protectionists. Don't expect anything positive from this pres as he is the president of the world with his one world government ideas.