More than twenty years ago, I had a job at an American call center in Mandaue City, Cebu Province here in the Philippines. Back then, the call center industry of the nation was very young and yet quickly growing in terms of revenues, new foreign investments and new jobs. Today, the Philippines has a large information technology and business process management (IT-BPM) sector.
That being said, America today is quickly reforming under the leadership of President Donald Trump and already business ties and trade relationships have quickly been changing. In the United States Senate (US Senate), a bipartisan bill was formally filed – the Keep Call Centers in America Act of 2025.
Already, the proposal is already disturbing the information technology and business process management sector of the Philippines as revealed by the Manila Bulletin in its business news report.
To make things clear, I am not taking sides here. I am a citizen of the Philippines who worked for a few months in an American call center a very long time ago and at my age, I have no intention to return to call center work. I am already engaging in a new business that has nothing to do with call centers and business process management. As for how America’s leaders deal with call centers and business processing centers located in different parts of the world, that is their decision to make. It would be interesting, perhaps intriguing, to see how the Philippines IT-BPM sector will adjust if ever the Keep Call Centers in America Act of 2025 becomes a law someday.
To put things in perspective, posted below is an excerpt from the news report of the Manila Bulletin. Some parts in boldface…
The Philippine information technology and business process management (IT-BPM) sector is bracing for the potential impact of a bill in the United States (US) Senate that seeks to end the practice of offshoring among American call centers.
The IT and Business Process Association of the Philippines (IBPAP), the country’s leading IT-BPM group, said the industry is currently monitoring the progress of this proposed legislation.
“At this stage, we are continuing to track developments,” IBPAP told Manila Bulletin.
The proposed Keep Call Centers in America Act of 2025, filed as a bipartisan bill in the US Senate, is aiming to curb offshoring or relocation of business operations from one country to another as it pertains to call center jobs.
In a statement by Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego, a Democrat, he said the bill looks to reverse the continued decline of call center operations in America, driven by the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) offshoring.
Citing data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Gallego noted that the American call center industry will lose approximately 150,000 workers by 2033 if such practices persist.
“The Keep Call Centers in America Act would work to reverse this trend by limiting federal benefits to companies that ship call center jobs overseas,” said Gallego, who filed the bill with West Virginia Senator Jim Justice, a Republican.
Under the proposed bill, companies are required to notify the US Department of Labor (DOL) at least 120 days before relocating operations overseas or contracting out call center work to another entity that relocates abroad.
The DOL, meanwhile, will be mandated to maintain a public list of employers that have relocated operations. Companies will remain on the list for five years “unless they return an equal or greater number of call center jobs in the US.”
Call center firms on this list will be ineligible for new federal grants and guaranteed loans and will not be given preference when awarding contracts.
In a CBS News report, Gallego said that aside from supporting the return of domestic jobs, the bill will likewise address consumer concerns when it comes to “security around their private information.”
The bill, if enacted, will cover businesses with either 50 or more full-time employees, or 50 or more employees whose combined work hours total at least 1,500 per week. As such, the measure will impact large-scale call center operations such as those that are currently operating in the Philippines.
Based on a 2023 report by the Ateneo Policy Center, more than 200 US-based firms have invested approximately $7.8 billion to set up operations in the Philippines since 2003.
The proposed Keep Call Centers in America Act could not have come at a worse time, given that the Philippines’ services exports are slowing down.
In a report, Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) lead economist Emilio Neri Jr. noted that services exports shrank by 4.2 percent year-on-year in the second quarter of 2025, citing data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA). This followed a 6.3-percent growth rate in the first quarter, which decelerated from a 13.2-percent expansion in the fourth quarter of 2024.
Neri said the services export sector is weighed down by a sharp drop in travel and signs of weakness in the IT-BPM sector.
To examine the details of the Keep Call Centers in America Act of 2025, click here and here.
Let me end this post by asking you readers: What is your reaction to this recent development? Do you know a lot of people here in the Philippines who work in American call centers? Do you seriously believe that if ever the Keep Call Centers in America Act of 2025 becomes a law, it will someday compel American companies to close down its call centers here in the Philippines and create a wave of new job losses? Without American companies and clients, do you think the Philippines IT-BPM sector will shrink dramatically? Do you think the Keep Call Centers in America Act of 2025 will be passed by US Congress and get signed into law by US President Trump?
You may answer in the comments below. If you prefer to answer privately, you may do so by sending me a direct message online.
+++++
Thank you for reading. If you find this article engaging, please click the like button below, share this article to others and also please consider making a donation to support my publishing. If you are looking for a copywriter to create content for your special project or business, check out my services and my portfolio. Feel free to contact me with a private message. Also please feel free to visit my Facebook page Author Carlo Carrasco and follow me on Twitter at @HavenorFantasy as well as on Tumblr at https://carlocarrasco.tumblr.com/ and on Instagram athttps://www.instagram.com/authorcarlocarrasco
Author Carlo Carrasco 
My involvement in call centers is as a consumer, to which I will say I deplore the level of service and language skills I encounter during each and every offshore call.
If this bill could improve my call experience when contacting some company’s support group, I’d help my congresscritter to vote for it… twice!
My government should think of the United States first and primarily. However, benefit derives in many terms of a very complex equation. Among those benefits are some rendered by the relationships we have with our allies. The Philippines are an ally and have been an historical one for over 100 years. This, especially during this period of growing aggression and friction by China, may elevate our relationship with the Philippines to more than a competitor to our trade.
And the business profit derived from offshore call centers does not simply fall into an offshore piggy bank. US-based companies choose offshore call centers for many reasons, I’m sure. I can think of two: cost and availability. Both of these business choices improve the bottom line and service (however poor the language and technical skills may be) of US companies. That benefit is not purely foreign.
To me, the consumer, I question the motive of this bill. Rather than attribute any benevolence to the author and supporters, I rather suspect that the congresscritters are in somebody’s pockets: specifically, those who want to expend their own call centers on US soil. The two best qualities of my elected representatives is their face.
Before we climb on the “Made in USA” bus, I’d have to see some real evidence that offshore call centers — despite their crappy service quality — result in an overall detriment to US businesses and consumers. I would require, too, a critical evaluation regarding how changing our businesses relationship in this industry might negatively affect our relationship with the Philippines (specifically to this point).
This is not an easy decision.
LikeLike
I work in the IT world, and for nearly 30 years been working with call centers of various shapes and sizes (including some for Fortune 500 companies that you would recognize). The push to offshore call centers has been going on since the early 2000’s but accelerated with the advent of Voice over IP technologies, allowing calls to be routed anywhere in the world. In my current role I only support a small call center, (our IT help desk, which is primarily in the US) but have seen the good and bad of offshoring, and I would support an effort like this.
I recently had a personal experience with a technology service provider when a part of their service “broke”. I first contacted them via chat, and realized by the user name and the way their responses were written that I was likely dealing with overseas. They said they performed an action that should fix it, but to wait 24 hours for it to take effect (I knew that the fix should have been instantaneous, so that was their lie to get me out of chat.
After 24 hours, and still broken, I called and clearly got someone from India (I’ve worked with way too many people in India over the years that it is obvious to me when speaking to them). This person, despite my saying I know the problem and that it was theirs to fix, kept trying to blame my side. I asked for escalation, got a supervisor (also from India), and went through the same round of them blaming my side. I finally convinced them after 90 minutes on the phone of needing to get this to an engineer, who responded with it being my client (since I never spoke to the engineer directly, this was the output of the supervisor feeding them bad information) – I responded with the necessary information to reproduce the problem (that I had also provided everyone before him), and the engineer had it fixed in 10 minutes. So I wasted 48 hours fighting a problem that took 10 minutes to fix, all because this company offshores their support.
LikeLike
My daughter trained workers in the Philippines to do her job (in the banking sector) and the people in her department did the same. When upper management decided the Philippines people knew enough, they laid off the entire section and all these people were out of work. It took my daughter 8 months to find another job.
LikeLike
While I do understand that Philipine businesses and workers have benefited greatly from this work, and closing the call centers would cause a major disruption to the country, I still support this effort.
From the perspective of an American, I am unindated with calls regarding Medicare enrollment, car warranties, and how excited the caller would be to make an offer on my house!
That’s just a few on my list.
The abuses of many of the foreign countries that have received that offshore contracting, plus those countries that have not reigned in the scammers, makes Americans quite indifferent to the suffering of others in these cases.
Again, every Filipino may be completely innocent of any evil actions. The fact remains, bringing back this industry to America allows our laws and regulations for the companies to better control abuses.
LikeLike