We know that Donald Trump is claiming credit for persuading United Technologies (UTC), the parent company of Carrier, to keep jobs in Indiana that were scheduled to move to Mexico. Those jobs will stay, or at least
some of them:
In the end, UTC agreed to retain approximately 800 manufacturing jobs at the Indiana plant that had been slated to move to Mexico, as well as another 300 engineering and headquarters jobs. In return, the company will get roughly $700,000 a year for a period of years in state tax incentives.
Some 1,300 jobs will still go to Mexico, which includes 600 Carrier employees, plus 700 workers from UTEC Controls in Huntington, Ind.
In a
Washington Post story, a question I've been wondering about
is raised:
John Mutz, a member of the corporation's board and a former lieutenant governor ... said he had not reviewed the final terms of the agreement and could not provide details about how much money the company would receive or over what period.
“One of the key questions is how long will they be here,” he said.
Yes, because some of the workers in question
were going to stay on for a while, even before the current deal:
The Carrier plant became a campaign issue after a video surfaced showing an executive telling workers about the plans to close the facility and move production to Monterrey over the next three years....
The Hartford, Conn., based company has emphasized that it gave the 2,000 affected Indiana workers three years' notice before the facilities are to complete the move to Mexico.
So the process was going to take three years. And when deals similar to this one have been made,
how long have they held?
But the practice has mixed results. For instance, Dell closed a North Carolina plant in 2009 just five years after receiving millions in state tax incentives to open it. Production then moved to Mexico.
So have the jobs really been saved? Or is this just a temporary reprieve? Will Carrier continue to employ these workers significantly longer than it would have otherwise? We'll see.
