15 August 2014 (03:25 UTC-07 Tango)/18 Shawwal 1435/24 Mordad 1393/20 Ren-Shen 4712
In October 2010 insurance company Allstate, the mayor of Chubbuck (Steve England) and the governor of Idaho (Butch Otter) announced at a public ground breaking ceremony the creation of a call center that was promised to eventually employ 500 people.
The Allstate call center was built in The Crossings plaza adjacent to the Pine Ridge Mall, and became operational at the end of 2011, but nowhere near 500 jobs were created.
By the end of 2012, there were about 250 employees at the Chubbuck Allstate call center, making Allstate the largest employer in the city. Many of the positions are part time only. Allstate claims they spent more than $22-million USD on the project, but I know they got a lot of incentives from the state (taxpayers. Allstate called it “nine months of negotiations”).
The $22-million+ Allstate call center in Chubbuck, Idaho, already shedding jobs after barely 3 years of operations.
In 2013 Allstate added Roadside Services to the Chubbuck call center (at the expense of Allstate jobs in other states). Local news reports said the move would create an additional 225 jobs, thereby keeping the promise of nearly 500 jobs made back in 2010. Well, that didn’t last long.
Right after the groundbreaking ceremonies in 2010. The property is known as The Crossings, with Home Depot being the only occupant until Allstate came along.
On 13 August 2014, it was revealed that Allstate is shutting down their Chubbuck call center’s Roadside Services. Those jobs will be shipped off to other call centers (including a new call center in Draper, Utah), or the Chubbuck Roadside Services employees can hope to be transfered to the original Chubbuck Customer Contact Center.
Allstate officials told local news media that this does not mean Allstate is leaving Chubbuck after only three years of operations, but guess what folks, Allstate has already done that in other parts of the country. In fact, Allstate has been shutting down call centers (some only recently opened) across the country for the past two years! (as I’ve pointed out in many of my Job Losses & Store Closings reports)
Allstate is playing the same game other call center operators are playing: They come to town and build new call centers using taxpayer funded incentives (basically no cost to the call center operators), they employ a couple hundred people for a few years, then, when the tax incentives expire they pull stakes and move on to the next sucker who’s willing (desperate for jobs) to waste their taxdollars on them.
Don’t be surprised if they eventually shutdown the entire Chubbuck Allstate call center.
East Idaho television news didn’t tell the story clearly