U.S. call center jobs moving to Canada
125045
Research firm predicts closure of more than 3,000 U.S. centers as jobs fly north.
378316
SBC, the second-biggest US phone company, plans to cut more than 10,000 jobs, or about 6% of its workforce, by the end of next year.
334887
TORONTO (CP) - Last-minute asylum-seekers in the United States flocked to the Canadian border Tuesday as the deadline for stringent changes to refugee applications drew near.
658684
Nortel Networks Corp. will lay off approximately 1,400 employees in the U.S. and about 950 in Canada, with those employees to be notified by the end of June 2005, the network equipment vendor said in a regulatory filing Thursday that fleshed out earlier announcements of the coming layoffs.
210300
By Andy Vuong, The Denver Post  Sep. 19--Comcast plans to add 500 call-center jobs in Colorado by the end  of 2007, the cable giant said Monday.
501626
MANILA Â As India moves up-market in outsourcing, the Philippines is quickly gaining a share of the customer-service call center business. It may be a low-end, low-margin business, but for the Philippines it has been an employment boon.
307060
By Bruce C. Smith, The Indianapolis Star  Dec. 12--Central Indiana has dialed in another call center that will  provide up to 435 jobs in Fishers.    It's the latest in a trend of telephone and e-communications operations  in the state.
197961
(InfoWorld) - When Microsoft made what appeared to be a minor announcement last week that it would expand its Canadian operations with the creation of the Microsoft Canada Development Centre for software development based in the greater Vancouver, British Columbia area, it went mostly unnoticed. One of the only exceptions was a story on InfoWorld, Microsoft Canada Responds to Immigration Woes, which recognized something new was afoot. What no one in the lower 48 states realized at the time was how significant this move north might be and how the Canadian immigration policy makes it all possible. Nevertheless, Canadian Katarina Onuschak, a licensed immigration consultant and owner of T&CS Canada, a consultancy for Canadian immigration, says she immediately recognized the significance of the Centre when she read the news.Â Â  "It will be a beginning of new era," said Onuschak. There are two pieces to the puzzle that, when brought together, may indeed represent a new era for Canada's high tech industry and for U.S. companies who prefer near-shoring as opposed to offshoring. Canada's far more liberal immigration policy for temporary high tech workers combined with Microsoft's stated intentions of opening the software development center to house developers "from around the world" makes it clear why Onuschak responded as she did.Â  This makes it possible for Microsoft and others to have their cake and eat it too. Near-shoring gives companies better time zone management and allows companies to hire programmers based on whatever parameters they choose, which may be skills or pay scale, while not having to face the limitations of green card and H-1B regulations. Of course it will also kick start a mostly slow-growing software development industry in Canada. As the Microsoft announcement plainly stated, "The Vancouver area is a global gateway with a diverse population, is close to Microsoft's corporate offices in Redmond, and allows the company to recruit and retain highly skilled people affected by immigration issues in the U.S." Many companies may follow Microsoft's lead say the experts.Â  The liberal Canadian policy comes from a project targeted specifically at information technology workers, who are considered a special category by Canada's immigration agency. The special category created by the Canadian government for information technology workers and the six categories under which workers must qualify was actually created back in 1997 as a pilot project to make sure Canada had enough programmers to deal with Y2K. As interpreted by the National Labor Market [Canada's equivalent to the U.S. Department of Labor], any software developers falling into the six major developer categories do not have to go to Service Canada, Canada's Immigration and Naturalization agency, to apply for a work permit. Workers can go straight to a Canadian visa office to apply. This speeds up the visa process. The ruling states that "under this process, no confirmation letter from Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC) is necessary for specific jobs for which finding a foreign worker will not have a negative impact on Canadian or permanent-resident job seekers and workers." The six categories of software developers include the following: Senior Animation Effects Editor, Embedded Systems Software Designer, MIS Software Designer, Multimedia Software Developer, Software Developer -- Services, Software Products Developer, and Telecommunications Software Designer. The policy from Citizenship and Immigration Canada goes on to state, "This means that if you are coming to Canada to work in one of the jobs listed ... you do not need a letter from HRSDC, and your work permit application may be processed more quickly." There is little doubt that the Microsoft Development Centre will be home to software developers from around the world," as Microsoft says in its press release. Even critics who believe current U.S. immigration policy for high tech workers is too liberal agree on what this Centre will represent. "Make no mistake about it. That programming group Microsoft will set up in Vancouver won't be staffed with many Canadians ... you'll find that the programmers in that group will be mainly people on work visas, not Canadian citizens or permanent residents," said Norm Matloff, a professor of computer science at University of California at Davis. In the meantime, immigration lawyers on both sides of the border say that the leveraging of liberal Canadian immigration law by Microsoft has the potential to jump start a major move north for software development.Â  Greg Siskind, a partner at Siskind Susser Bland and an immigration attorney here in the States says that he's been warning lots of people who agree with CNN's Lou Dobbs when he rails against outsourcing at the same time that he complains about the H-1B visa program that they can't have it both ways. "I would say I am surprised it is taking this long. Companies have few choices. They can either make do without or move operations or steal workers from other companies," said Siskind Sergio Karas, an immigration attorney based in Canada, also believes Microsoft's move to Canada is in reaction to U.S. immigration policy.Â Â  "This move by Microsoft is H-1B driven. There is no cap in Canada. Depending on the country of origin, we usually prepare an application, and in three weeks, a person can be working here," said Karas. However, Karas believes the pilot program needs updating to better reflect current needs for software development -- Karas wants to see revisions in the six original software development categories -- as well as revisions in pay scales. "The pay scales required have not been revised for some time." Even at lower pay rates, however, Microsoft and others may very well be able to attract skilled workers to software development centers like Microsoft's. The fact is the U.S. and Canada are still both highly prized working environments whose standard of living and pay scales, even when low by national standards, are typically higher than what a worker can earn in his home country.Â  Karas says it is still too early to tell if the Microsoft move will create a wave of similar centers. Siskind says he is surprised it took so long to happen. And Onuschak says, "If that's Bill Gates intention, it would be great if it happens."
31751
By Tom Dochat, The Patriot-News, Harrisburg, Pa.  Sep. 8--Comcast Corp. plans to add 170 jobs in central Pennsylvania by  year's end as it rolls out its digital voice residential phone service.
519613
A VoIP expert at a national voice and data carrier draws on his experience to help you smooth the transition.
479339
Capital One Financial Corp., the holding company of Capital One Bank, plans to eliminate about 750 jobs as it shifts the majority of its production service operations to a U.S.-based supplier, the company reported Tuesday.
114873
Application migration specialist ArtinSoft is planning tools to smooth customers&#39; transition from Oracle to Microsoft Corp&#39;s SQL Server.
561286
One hundred and twenty jobs are being created at a call centre near Newport, it has been announced.
282594
By PAUL RESTUCCIA  The media are filled with stories of jobs being shifted overseas - from software programmers to call-center representatives, from insurance claim adjusters to X-ray technologists.
662787
Nortel Networks Corp.   will slash 2,900 jobs, or 8.5 percent of its workforce, over the next two years and shift another 1,000 employees to lower-cost locations like China, India and Mexico as North America's biggest maker of telephone equipment struggles to shore up its profits.
731432
BT plans to migrate its UK call centres to a new VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) system over the next two years, allowing around 9,700 call centre agents on 124 sites to work as one team in a single, virtual, customer contact centre.
30279
Imperial Oil Ltd. says it will shift its head office to Calgary from Toronto, with the move to the Alberta oilpatch affecting 1,500 employees and expected to be completed by next August.