Edinburg sees job losses, growth from call centers
EDINBURG — A customer contact center with plans to employ 400 people here will begin operations in August just as another Edinburg company will lay off nearly the same number.
MAXIMUS, a leading administrator of government services in the United States, announced Tuesday that it will open an Edinburg call center in August that will employ 400 by the end of 2012 under its contract with the Texas Health and Human Services Commission. Located in Edinburg’s Renaissance Industrial Park, the call center will be the company’s fourth site in Texas to provide the 2-1-1 service that helps residents apply for and answer questions about Medicaid, food stamps and other state assistance programs.
The MAXIMUS announcement comes on the heels of a layoff warning issued last week by Teleperformance, which announced in October that it would bring hundreds of jobs to its call center, 1701 S. Closner Blvd. in Edinburg, to provide inbound customer care for a leading wireless company. Teleperformance notified the Texas Workforce Commission last week that it would lay off 391 Edinburg employees, most of them customer service agents.
Edinburg Economic Development Corp. Executive Director Pedro Salazar said employment gains from MAXIMUS were tempered by the Teleperformance layoffs.
“It’s unfortunate when you have downsizing but many of them may be able to transition over to MAXIMUS,” Salazar said. “There are a lot of people who have a significant amount of skills or training who may be able to make the transition.”
MAXIMUS currently employs more than 2,200 people at call sites in Austin, San Antonio, Midland and Athens that are contracted by HHSC to assist Texans with state benefit programs. Leslie Wolfe, the company’s president of health services in Texas, said Edinburg was a “good fit” for expansion because of its bilingual workforce and an available labor market.
“The Valley is growing fast and still has fairly high unemployment so there’s a great opportunity to hire,” she said. “It has a great reputation for having a good labor market because people don’t turn over and they want to come to work.”
Edinburg’s call center will be similar in size and operation to the company’s other locations that are already at capacity. She said Edinburg agents will take calls from 2-1-1 Texas, helping people complete an application for state services or fielding general questions about a resident’s status.
MAXIMUS, the country’s leading administrator of Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program service, employs more than 6,500 people worldwide. The company has already engaged local recruiting agencies with its first training class slated to begin in August.
Teleperformance corporate spokesman Mark Pfeiffer did not return a phone call Tuesday about the company’s Edinburg layoffs. A notice sent to the Texas Workforce Commission says it will lay off 391 employees beginning Aug. 31 because it will no longer support certain call center services.
In October, Teleperformance announced it would expand to 800 employees at its existing Edinburg call center because of a contract it signed with a wireless provider. Although the notice says it will continue conducting business for other clients in Edinburg, it was unclear Tuesday whether any of those 800 jobs would remain.
Teleperformance, a publicly traded company with more than 120,000 employees worldwide, announced the loss of 300 jobs in southwestern Pennsylvania last month with a similar notice.
Edinburg has a lower unemployment rate than any Valley city other than McAllen. However, its unemployment rate was at 8.8 percent in May, higher than the stage average of 7.9 percent and the city’s own 8.1 percent it reported last year.
--
Jared Janes covers Hidalgo County government, Edinburg and legislative issues for The Monitor. He can be reached at (956) 683-4424.
