Abbott joins Trump in announcement of new McAllen call center

Gov. Greg Abbott joined President Donald Trump and the CEO of Charter Communications on Friday morning at the White House to announce the creation of a "fully bilingual" call center in McAllen.

The new center is part of Charter's plan to shut down all of its off-shore call centers. It will be the first fully bilingual center operated by the company. Trump said the new center would create jobs for over 600 people. 

During the meeting, Trump said the communications company has committed to invest $25 billion in the U.S. and to hire 20,000 American workers over the next four years. Though Charter initially announced its McAllen plans last August, Trump said the company is following the steps of other business giants such as Exxon Mobil, Intel and Boeing that have "recently announced billions of dollars" in investments and jobs following his election victory. During the meeting, he said the administration is in "the process of announcements" of thousands" of jobs coming back into the country. 

"We're raising a new economic model, the American model," Trump said. "We're going to massively eliminate job-killing regulations, that has started already big-league, reduce government burdens and reduce taxes that are crushing American businesses and American workers all over this country."

Abbott said he was proud of Trump for "living up to his campaign promises" of creating jobs, and he added that he was happy for Charter's expansion in Texas.

"Texas is number one in the nation for job creation because of the pro-business climate we have because we have the right workforce to take care of the needs of companies like Charter Communications," he said. "This is a win-win, it's a win for the president, it's a win for Charter, it's a win for the great state of Texas."

Charter CEO Thomas Rutledge said his company has been insourcing jobs for five years and, following its recent merging with Time Warner Cable, will now insource all calls that TWC outsourced. Kathleen Mayo, Charter's executive vice president for customer operations, said that the McAllen center will open next month and that the company has hired a bilingual general manager as well as 100 employees. 

"[The McAllen center] will allow costumers who prefer to communicate with us in Spanish to do so and we will provide them with service and technical support," Mayo said.

Former Texas Governor and current U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry was also at the announcement.

Read related Tribune coverage: 

• Gov. Greg Abbott met with Trump on the same day the U.S. House is expected to vote on Republicans' plan to repeal and replace Obamacare after postponing the vote Thursday. Abbott said Thursday he was "very closely" watching the debate over the legislation.

• As local control battles rage at the Texas Capitol, Gov. Greg Abbott is voicing support for a much more sweeping approach to the issues that have captured headlines.