April 2014 was not a good month for the business process outsourcing (BPO) sector in Costa Rica. Two big companies, Bank of America and Intel, shut down a major chunk of their operations in the Central Valley and about 2,000 workers received the dreaded pink slips. Earlier in April, Illinois call center CustomerSpeak suddenly sent 500 employees home. This exodus is taking place at the same time President Laura Chinchilla prepares to step down. Is there any relation?

Welcome to the new business paradigm show, brought to you by globalization and free trade. Today’s episode is “Free Markets: Easy Come, Easy Go.” Global corporate giants such as Bank of America and Intel call the shots these days, and there is little governments can do (at least under the purported auspices of free trade) to stop them from doing so.

Intel’s downsizing has been in the works for about a year; it is the company’s response to the competitive strain that mobile computing has brought upon them. It is uncertain whether Intel can catch up to mobile rivals, but they will give it a try in Asia instead of Costa Rica.

Bank of America is going through a global downsizing campaign that will hit Costa Rica as well as Mexico and the Philippines. According to the Wall Street Journal, the financial leviathan has laid off more than 45,000 employees around the world since 2010, which happens to coincide with the bank’s repayment schedule of bailout funds to the U.S. Treasury and the completion of mortgage modifications in the U.S.

CustomerSpeak, a U.S. data collection firm that employed 500 call center agents who worked on the upper levels of the Mall of San Pedro, was shut down by La Caja, Costa Rica’s public health care and social security pension system. According to a public investigator who specializes on tracking down delinquent obligations to La Caja, CustomerSpeak was on the hook for more than $4 million when Fuerza Publica officers were ordered to raid the call center offices.

Many of the displaced workers are already being courted by other BPO firms and foreign companies doing business in Costa Rica, and the free trade economic sector is booming. According to a news report by Eugenia Soto Morales of financial news weekly El Financiero, the Zonas Francas (free trade zones) in the Central Valley were very active in terms of hiring and economic activity during February.

In social media circles, veteran employees of the call center circuit in Costa Rica remarked that “fixers” are busy working on the return of CustomerSpeak (formerly known as Datascension) under a different name and corporate structure, but the unseen principals will remain the same.

In the meantime, laid-off workers are finding out that opportunities at sportsbooks and other online gambling venues in Costa Rica are becoming scarce as the gaming legalization crusade continues in the U.S.