Another $1B for Albany -- Another Plant to Close in Buffalo

The Times Union reports that an R&D center is being proposed by Global Foundaries, Inc. for Malta (just north of Albany) as part an expansion for a SECOND chip fabrication plant.

Plans for the R&D center were part of the pitch that GlobalFoundries made to the state as it reportedly sought more than $1 billion in new public financing to build another factory.

Meanwhile the Buffalo News reports that American Axle & Manufacturing is threatening to close its last WNY plant in Cheektowaga, employing 100,  if labor costs are not reduced. The plant opened in 1999 with a lower labor-cost structure when the company employed 2,800 at two other WNY plants.  The other plants have since closed.  The company's CEO

. . . keeps pressing for more-extensive changes, such as lowering starting pay for workers to $10 an hour from the current $11.50 per hour.  . . .

Starting pay currently $11.50 and hour?  Isn't manufacturing supposed to be high paying?

American Axle has increasingly shifted its production outside the United States, to places such as Mexico. At the same time, Wheaton said, the company has put more pressure on workers at its remaining U.S. operations to accept reduced compensation.

In both stories People are being pressured to contribute to corporate bottom lines.

In the first story, the People are the taxpayers who have already given the company over a $Billion in grants and infrastructure.  In the second story the People are the workers who have already made pay concessions.

The moral to both stories is that those with the means to pressure for more will do so. . . . and in both the government has supplied the means.

In the first, the State government uses its power of taxation to take from the taxpayers and give to Global Foundries.  In the second, the Federal government's power over international trade has been perverted to allow American Axle to avoid labor and environmental laws by relocating overseas the jobs that produce products which are consumed here.

In both cases governmental power has been used to reward private interests at the expense of the average person. When the government teams up with private businesses, the average person loses.