- ONTARIO, Oregon (AP) -- Chris
Harry is a model employee for the U.S. call-center industry.
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- The 25 year-old arrives promptly at his cubicle, speaks
courteously on the phone and is never late or absent. He plans to stick
with his job for three years, a boon in an industry plagued by high turnover.
And he gladly works for money many Americans would scoff at -- $130 or
so a month.
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- After all, he could be back swabbing cell-block floors
for a third of that.
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- "I can't complain about fair," said Harry,
who was sentenced to 10 years and eight months for robbery. "I did
a crime and I'm in prison. At least I'm not wearing a ball and chain."
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- Prison inmates like Harry are the reason Perry Johnson
Inc., a Southfield, Michigan consulting company, chose to remain in the
United States rather than join a host of telemarketing companies moving
offshore.
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- Perry Johnson had intended to move to India. But the
company chose instead to open inside the Snake River Correctional Institution,
a sprawling razor wire and cinder block state penitentiary a few miles
west of the Idaho line.
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- The center's opening followed a year-long effort by the
Oregon Department of Corrections to recruit businesses that would otherwise
move offshore, and echoes a national trend among state and federal prisons
to recruit such companies.
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- "This is a niche where the prison industry could
really help the U.S. economy," said Robert Killgore, director of Inside
Oregon Enterprises, the quasi-state agency that recruits for-profit business
to prisons.
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- "I'm really excited about this," he said. "We
keep the benefits here in the United States with companies where it's fruitless
to compete on the outside."
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- Prison officials have long praised work programs for
lowering recidivism and teaching inmates skills and self-respect, yet have
been criticized by unions for taking jobs from the private sector.
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- Those concerns are moot if a company planned to leave
the country anyway, Killgore said. National prison labor trade groups support
the idea.
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- Ten states, including Oregon, employ inmates in for-profit
call centers. Oregon and many others also make garments and furniture --
industries that have largely moved offshore, other than in prisons. Inmates
are paid between 12 cents and $5.69 an hour, according to Bureau of Prisons
statistics.
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- Perry Johnson Inc. opened its call center in an Oregon
prison for half the price of relocating to India, and achieved many of
the same benefits, according to Mike Reagan, director of Inside Oregon
Enterprises at Snake River.
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- Inmates at Snake River must have three to five years
remaining on their sentences to qualify for the call-center job. Outside,
the typical turnover is nine months.
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- Also, inmates make good telemarketers, prison officials
said.
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- "They see an opportunity to talk to people and learn
how to communicate," said Nick Armenakis, a manager for Inside Oregon
Enterprises. "They are told that to keep these jobs, they have to
be very patient and very contrite, and follow protocol."
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- The convicts pitch Perry Johnson's quality control consulting
service to executives at American businesses, sometimes even company presidents.
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- Prison officials randomly monitor inmates' phone conversations
and all calls are digitally recorded to discourage personal calls or illegal
activity.
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- The prisoners work 40-hour weeks in rows of nondescript
cubicles.
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- Critics assail the idea of retaining American jobs in
prisons as a flagrant violation of minimum wage laws and an affront to
free workers.
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- "Obviously, it doesn't do anything for the labor
market here," said University of Oregon political science professor
Gordon Lafer, author of a study on prison labor.
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- "It's like bringing little islands of the Third
World right here to the heartland of America," he said. "You
get the same total control of the work force, the same low wages, and it
does nothing for the inmates."
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- Also, convicts don't benefit much from training for jobs
that no longer exist in America because they have all gone overseas or
into prisons, he said.
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- Harry said he is thankful for the skills he has learned
in prison, and intends to attend college when he is released. He kicked
back in his cubicle and bantered about the weather with a customer in Houston.
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- "I've been here three months," he said. "Nobody's
ever suspected they're talking to a convict."
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