Globe employees protest India and India protests right back

Ron,

I have lived within the home delivery regions of the NYTimes and the Boston Globe and have never found their circulation people to be deeply knowledgeable about local geography -- but they managed to be pleasant and helpful nonetheless. Your mileage may have differed.
"Account billing" is an accounting job -- not a sales job , nor a delivery job. Should papers not be delivered, accounts billing (whether in Bangalore, Boston, or anywhere in-between) is simply going to send notice through the proper corporate channels in order to get the problem fixed.
I am not saying that there isn't a convenience when the employees are local, nor that there isn't the possibility of improved performance due to communication via informal channels. But the notion that these jobs require substantial insight/information about local businesses does not seem obvious to me. Again, I am assuming that the accounts billing departments are distinct from the sales and delivery departments.
Moreover, nowhere does the placed ad suggest that local knowledge is vital -- probably because it isn't. The ad claims entirely reasonably that the senior employees had the experience to do a better job than their replacements, and then there's some cheap fearmongering about personal information being at risk because the acounting will take place in a foreign country. (I consider this fearmongering because there's no reason to believe that the same security protocols implemented in the US aren't implemented in India, nor is there any reason to believe -- beyond some degree of xenophobia -- that Indians are somehow more prone to identity theft. In fact, most of the big identity theft stories over the past few years have involved major corporations handling confidential information incompetently right on US soil.)
I do not expect outsourced employees to stand idly by while their jobs go overseas. But I think the "invaluable local knowledge" argument will not stand up to scrutiny.

Anon

Who are these Bostonians who any sort of grasp of the whole city? I have very rarely met somebody who is from around here who understands more than their immediate area.

We had a friend coming to stay and she knew she had to cross a river soon. She stopped to ask directions and people told her that they had lived there many years, but didn't know which way it was to the river.

The crossing over the Mystic was three blocks away! There was a town boundary and neighborhood split (commuter rail line) between them. Really.

I have found that many people that have lived here all their lives have no concept of what is on the other side of the city - my husband's Weymouth buddies used to be pretty useless when even knowing how to get to New Hampshire via major roadways. Similarly, organizing a school event outside our town involves intensive turn-by-turn instructions to get five or ten miles away. I think it is an extension of an intensive lack of map reading and other-than-local history and geography instruction in this area (yes, I've asked people about it and most had an appalling lack of history and geography instruction).

Maybe it is because I'm a cyclist that I know the roads in many area towns. I find it strange that people can be some place and never explore, but geographic provincialism is the norm around here - even in places very nearby.