The California State Automobile Association has decided to close its call centers in California, including one in the East Bay, and shift hundreds of jobs to CSAA call centers in other states.

The call centers that will close are located in Livermore, Elk Grove (Sacramento County), and Irvine (Orange County). Together, the three call centers employ about 900 people, according to CSAA, which is also known as AAA Northern California.

The departure of the call centers is tied to what over the last decade has become an economic bogeyman for a number of businesses with major operations in California: the state's chilly business climate.

"It costs more to do business in California than in other states," said Cynthia Harris, a spokeswoman for CSAA. "Moving our call center operations to states outside of California gives us an opportunity to reduce our operating costs."

Livermore's CSAA call center is expected to be the first to close. That East Bay center employs about 300. The target date for the Livermore shutdown is Sept. 1, Harris said. The Elk Grove center employs 500 and the Irvine call center has about 100 workers.

"All of our California call centers will close by 2010 and we will no longer have call centers in California after that," Harris said.

The centers handle customer calls for emergency road service, insurance sales, membership and travel, Harris said. To prepare for the shutdown, CSAA about two years ago opened

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a call center in Arizona. The company also intends to open a new call center in Oklahoma, she said.

"The public will not be aware of any transition," Harris said. "It will be seamless. Customer calls will be handled, emergency calls will be handled."

Despite this departure, CSAA has decided to ramp up its East Bay presence dramatically by shifting hundreds of jobs from San Francisco to the Walnut Creek area.

Construction is under way on a CSAA headquarters and administrative center near the Pleasant Hill BART station. About 1,000 CSAA employees will work at that office complex.

The pending shutdown of the call centers is a reminder that improvements to business conditions in California remain a work in progress, at best.

"We would not say the business climate has improved dramatically in California in recent years," said Gino DiCaro, a spokesman for the California Manufacturers and Technology Association.

The state has lost about 440,000 manufacturing jobs since 2001.

"Many of those losses result from the inability of companies to stay competitive in the state," DiCaro said. "But it's not just manufacturing. All employers in California are having trouble staying here because of the costs of doing business in the state."

CSAA officials said the company is encouraging the affected employees who don't want to move to the out-of-state call centers to take other jobs with the organization. It is also possible that employees who wish to depart the company will be offered severance, Harris said.

"We are trying to make this as painless as possible for employees," Harris said. "The Livermore employees have known since May that we are closing. We realize this is a significant change that may be difficult for employees."

George Avalos covers jobs, economic development, commercial real estate, finance and oil companies. Reach him at 925-977-8477 or gavalos@bayareanewsgroup.com.