States keep falling for these corporate promises and waste billions of our tax dollars crafting these sweetheart deals.
The idea of Foxconn manufacturing anything in Wisconsin, let alone something so specific, never made much sense to me. Do touchscreens sound fancy and exciting to voters?
I agree with Foxconn. I've worked in the public subsidy of private ventures sector (exactly in this sector.) It's entirely unreasonable for any company to expect that there would be any monitoring or enforcement of compliance to employment claims made when the subsidy was awarded. There was certainly none where I worked, and we gave away billions.
Okay they didn't promise, but did they have a contract?
>Documents obtained through a records request show Foxconn’s rationale: it doesn’t think it was specifically promising to build an LCD factory at all. According to a November 23rd letter to the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC), Foxconn does not think the factory specified in the contract, an enormous Generation 10.5 LCD fabrication facility, was actually a “material” part of the contract.
Come on, the contract specifies a large manufacturing plant. They build a tiny storage building instead. I'll buy it doesn't have to be an LCD factory, but it needs to be something with comparable jobs.
Good on Wisconsin for holding their feet to the fire. Too many of these corporate welfare packages end up being paid out even though the company keeps none of their promises.
HP got a bunch of corporate freebies to build a big facility in my city. The promise was that it would be a high salary corporate facility with highly paid sales and engineering.
They built their big subsidized building and it ended up being a glorified call center.