76 Gender Matters (2009) claimed that the average annual salary of a call center agent in the Philippines is USD3,964, which is lower than Thailand’s USD4,874, Malaysia’s USD5,199 and Singapore’s USD16,884. In other words, the driving force behind global outsourcing is massive cost reduction. Almost in every case, work is offshored in order to significantly reduce labor expenses (San Jose 2007), cut costs and maximize profits (Taylor and Bain 2005). In reality, foreign companies are exploiting our cheap labor. That the Philippines is said to have overtaken India in the BPO industry has a direct correlation to the fact that labor costs in the country has not increased significantly (Philippine Daily Inquirer 2010). It is important to emphasize this in order to have a better appreciation of the over-all situation of the call center workers. The growth of the call center industry was brought about by the same forces that transformed economies into ever-expanding markets which transcend national boundaries, all in the name of profit. The off-shoring of business functions is merely a continuation of the internationalization of the division of labor, whereby the less developed countries (or the economic South) supply the advanced industrial countries, or the transnational corporations, with cheap labor. In the Philippines, employment in the BPO sector has grown considerably and reached its peak in 2003. In 2008, outsourced work provided 237,175 jobs, and this industry was worth an estimated USD3.3 billion in revenues, which was about three percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) (Amante 2008). Data provided by Kabataan Party List Representative Raymond Palatino (2009), on the other hand, shows that the number of jobs generated by the call center industry grew from 99,000 workers in 2004 to 372,000 workers in 2008, most of them in their 20’s. In terms of revenues, from USD350 million in 2001, Palatino said that revenues generated from the BPO sector surged to USD6 billion in 2008. A study by Sibal et al. (2006) has shown that the call center company employs sixty percent more female regular employees than male. In 2005, call center industries on the average employed 379 women workers per establishment. Pineda Ofreneo (2005) also observed that the call center, the fastest growing sub-sector of the

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