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Anti-Monsanto protesters in Hawaii, 2012.
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- 1:31pm — May 18, 2022
a smarter Tucson is a better Tucson
Tucson can't claim purity of progressive essence with a cash-for-jobs economic development model that heralds the coming Caterpillar's mining division and expansion of Raytheon's missile factory. But the county does have a way to provide clarity to corporate "bad boys."... Read more»
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2 comments on this story
There’s a much bigger issue involved and this article, and most of the media, are ignoring it: Not discussed in the news coverage was Monsanto’s planned cutting of some 2600 jobs nationally, over 11 percent of its workforce. Or the closing of three research and development centers in Wisconsin, Connecticut and North Carolina with a loss of 90 jobs. The Marana R&D greenhouse will, according to the company, generate 40-50 full- and part-time jobs over the next five years.
Monsanto received a further “incentive” from the Marana Unified School District Governing Board which accepted a one-time payment of $500,000 in lieu of the nearly $4 million in tax revenue they would have received over the next five years.
And it’s not just Monsanto. Caterpillar closed its S. Milwaukee plant and disemployed 900 people in a town with 9000 households. That’s devastating.
Raytheon’s much-vaunted 2000 new jobs, according to The Sentinel, will still leave a net loss of employment with the many layoffs in recent years. HomeGoods is said to create 900 jobs at a new Distribution Center, but terminated 4,400 workers when they closed a Fall River, Massachusetts, DC.
These are issues that have to be addressed. Some companies move to China or Mexico; others play off one community against another in search of the better “incentives” deal. The crony capitalists get the gold while workers and communities get the shaft. The time is overdue for a national discussion on how to make this right, but Morlock’s article above misses that point completely.
OK, according to the article Pima County would net $188k in additional property taxes by accepting this deal. Now given the fact that, no matter what we think of Monsanto, they are going to put this facility somewhere, one could say that we might as well get the money. Not that I agree with this logic but it does raise another question that the article does not address.
That question is, How much spending on infrastructure like access roads etc. will the county have to spend to accommodate Monsanto? If it’s ends up costing us millions of dollars the deal doesn’t look so good. Of course when companies are challenging communities to a contest to see who can drop their pants first they always tout the number of high paying jobs their facility will bring to the area. They always highball these figures and what they don’t tell you is that the new employees will be mostly transferred in from out of state and that they factor in the salary of their CEO when they calculate the average salary that they will be paying.
So my question is exactly that, How much infrastructure expense will the county be on the hook for?