Report: Ohio Subsidized Job Flight From Hard-Hit Cities to Suburbs
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States regularly give companies tax breaks in return for creating jobs. But in Ohio, officials gave big tax breaks to 164 companies that took their jobs out of the most depressed inner city areas of Cincinnati and Cleveland and moved them to the affluent suburbs, according top a new report.
The companies left behind 14,500 workers in the hardest hit groups in the jobless economy—the poor, long-term unemployed and people of color. The subsidized relocations also fueled suburban sprawl, especially in the Cleveland region, the report says.
New Tools Bring State Corporate Tax Breaks to Light
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Each year, state and local governments give out billions in tax breaks and subsidies to corporations in return for a promise that the company will create new jobs. While most states disclose the names of companies receiving state and local tax breaks, cash grants and other subsidies for job creation, the quality of the reporting varies widely. In fact, about a dozen states are still keeping taxpayers in the dark, according to a new report.
The report, “Show Us the Subsidies,” by Good Jobs First, a nonprofit, non-partisan research center, shows that Illinois, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Ohio were found to have the best economic development disclosure.
“With state legislators making painful political budget decisions, corporate tax breaks should be completely visible so spending for economic development should be transparent,” says Greg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs First.
Report: Whirlpool Closing Will Cost Indiana Millions of $$$
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Whirlpool’s decision to abandon U.S. workers and send 1,100 production jobs out of Evansville, Ind., to a new plant in Mexico will create a ripple effect that will cost thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in lost income, according to a report released today.
Whirlpool already has eliminated one shift at the refrigerator plant in Evansville. The remaining jobs end in June. The study, written by Greg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs First, was released at press conferences in Evansville and Indianapolis, the state capital.
The study estimates the plant closure will throw 2,502 people out of work. That includes 966 Whirlpool workers who live in Indiana and another 1,536 who work in businesses that will lose significant clientele after the plant shuts down. That total doesn’t include job loss in the neighboring states of Illinois and Kentucky, where 20 percent of the employees live. Read the full report here.
Job Quality in New Green Economy
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As the nation increasingly focuses on the need to create green jobs, a new report reminds us that such jobs do not always measure up in terms of wages and working conditions.
High Road or Low Road? Job Quality in the New Green Economy, released earlier this month by the grassroots community organization Good Jobs First, outlines strategies to ensure that green jobs are good jobs.
The report found that many wind and solar manufacturing plants are receiving large economic-development subsidies from state and local governments.
Says Greg LeRoy, Good Jobs First executive director:
This use of taxpayer money provides an opportunity to raise wages and other working conditions. Many states and localities already apply job quality standards to companies receiving job subsidies or public contracts. In the report, we urge wider and more aggressive use of such standards by federal as well as state and local agencies.
Double Standard: Critics of Big Three Loan Subsidize Foreign Competitors
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When Senate Republicans blocked the $14 billion emergency bridge loan needed to keep the nation’s auto industry operating, they knew it could cost between 3 million and 5 million jobs. But some of the most vociferous critics of the auto industry and the UAW reside in states that have given huge no-strings-attached subsidies to foreign auto plants. Some of those states even owe their very survival in part to the Big Three auto companies.
Good Jobs First reports that foreign-owned auto companies operating in the United States have received $3.6 billion in subsidies, mostly from southern “right to work” for less states. That amount doesn’t even count joint ventures with U.S. companies or include inflation, which would make the figures even higher in today’s dollars.
