Morning Read: Canadian defense contractor moving HQ to North Country
The Watertown Daily Times is reporting that General Propulsion Inc, a Canadian company, is moving its headquarters to Ogdensburg, so that the company will qualify to work on projects with the US Navy.
“It would result in a sizable number of jobs; 220 is the estimate based on the business plan,” City Manager Arthur J. Sciorra said.
Mr. Sciorra has been involved in discussions with General Propulsion Inc., an Ottawa, Ontario, firm that develops technologies for the Canadian and American navies as well as a host of private companies including Rolls-Royce, Siemens and Westinghouse.
“We have an agreement in place with the city,” said John Hensler, General Propulsion vice president. “We are looking at moving operations so we can work with the U.S. Navy.”
The facility would also be close to Canada’s capital, Ottawa, making Ogdensburg a strategic location, according to the WDT. Read more here.
Tags: canada, economy, stlawrencevalley
The culture of Ogdensburg is that Canadian manufacturers come and go. The 200 jobs are only one-third of the number lost when two Canadian companies left Ogdensburg a year ago. The Canadian firms come for the “cheap” labor, then leave after a few years.
Here’s a story from my DOL days, probably 20+ years ago. There was a big announcement about a Canadian firm coming to O’burg and bringing in the neighborhood of 65-75 jobs. What the papers didn’t report was that the same company was already in the US and was closing another facility with 60+ employees (in Massena) to move to O’burg. To induce the Canadian business to “relocate to the US” Ogdensburg and NYS had offered a package of tax abatement, cheap space in the O’burg industrial park and money to facilitate the move. The Massena employees were told that their jobs were moving to O’burg and they could move with their job or be laid off. All but a handful moved, the rest got unemployment benefits.
What a lot of people (taxpayers) don’t realize is that we have a culture of companies that chase business incentives. Back in 1998 TIME magazine ran a series of articles on how it works which is pretty much the pattern of what I wrote above. States and/or communities offer all sorts of subsidies to business to locate where jobs are needed. The businesses come and stay through the duration of the subsidy and then look for a new subsidy somewhere else. It’s basically a game of musical chairs with the local taxpayers bidding for and subsidizing jobs. In one case TIME wrote about in NJ the taxpayers paid the company $50K/yr for jobs that didn’t earn the worker $50k/yr. I’m not in a position now to know but I suspect it still goes on.
Guess Obama didn’t get the memo on BUY AMERICAN
There have been quite a few Canadian companies that have come and yes gone, but this is still really good news. It is better than the alternative, which is a big fat zero. I agree about over subsidizing but in this case that is not the core reason they want to come to Ogdensburg.
Good news.