So who thought of it?
"Intel cut Hudson jobs after tax deal expanded" by Todd Wallack and Megan Woolhouse | Globe Staff, September 14, 2013
HUDSON — In the seven years since the state increased a tax break to Intel almost tenfold, to as much as $300 million, the computer chip giant has cut more than 600 jobs at its facilities in Hudson and now plans to eliminate another 700 when it closes a factory in town next year.
Can we get our money back, please?
Officials with the Patrick administration said they are reviewing whether to end Intel’s tax break early because of the pending plant closing.
Why does it need a review?
However, it does not appear the state can force Intel to repay any of the tax benefits it claimed during the period it was cutting jobs, as the state law that authorized the deal at the time did not provide for so-called clawback provisions, except in cases of fraud.
Intel was very $mart!
“Some companies don’t meet their projections,” said Greg Bialecki, the state’s economic development chief. “That is a fact of life.”
But they are still making money, right?
Related:
"Intel Corp., the world’s largest chipmaker said fourth-quarter net income was $2.47 billion, partly due to slightly higher chip prices.... The world's largest chipmaker said its net income fell to $2 billion in the second quarter."
Ah, the fact$ of life.
As of last year, Intel had claimed some $82 million in tax benefits from a package that dates back to 1999, and was expanded in 2006 to be worth as much as $300 million over 20 years, depending on how much the company spent upgrading the Hudson factory.
And we can't get a damn dime back!
Intel said it has spent some $4.7 billion on the factory and a research and development facility in the town. Even so, the factory remains stocked with outdated equipment that cannot produce the high-end chips used in smartphones, tablets, and laptops.
So WHO STOLE THAT MONEY?
A new chip factory can easily cost several billion dollars, but Intel said there is not enough land nearby to build one, so it decided to close the Hudson factory at the end of 2014.
“It’s disappointing for all of us,” said Intel spokeswoman Ann Hurd. “We had a really good run and we worked really hard.”
And that's that, huh?
***************************
The sudden announcement has many in this small community in the outer western suburbs reeling.
“It’s terrible,” Al Pizzimento, co-owner with his son Nick of the Horseshoe Pub off Main Street, where Intel workers gather regularly for food and drink.
“There’s a domino effect on all the businesses around here,” the 70-year-old Pizzimento added. “When a big business downsizes, it affects everybody.”
I know because I live in a small community that has been devastated by such things.
From business owners on Main Street, to families of Intel workers, there are few people in this town who will not feel the loss of the plant closing. Joseph Durant, chairman of Hudson’s Board of Selectmen, estimated Intel paid about $1 million annually in taxes, helping Hudson finance road improvements, schools, and other expenses.
That before or after the kickbacks?
Yes, we must all grovel and beg for the generosity of our corporate masters if you want services.
Durant said municipal officials will try to quantify the effect the plant closing will have on town finances, and expects the answer will be unsettling.
“It’s not going to be good,” Durant said. “It’s never good news when a facility closes and people lose their jobs.”
Well, it is good news for $omebody somewhere.
Related: Unemployed increase as Mass. economy slows
Despite all the corporate welfare?
Hudson has been through this before, seeing waves of industry come and go as far back as the Civil War, when it was a shoe manufacturing hub and more recently, in the 1970s, when the now-defunct Digital Equipment Corp. helped turn the area into a high-tech enclave....
Oh, then they are used to it so it must be no big thing.
Working at a chip plant is a plum job in the manufacturing sector; in 2006, Intel estimated the average worker in Hudson earned $86,000 a year.
Now gone, with nothing to replace it despite mouthpiece announcements about how great the recovery that never was is.
These and other high-tech employment opportunities in the region have helped Hudson prosper. Unlike in some other struggling former mill towns in Central Massachusetts, new restaurants, shops, and financial firms have sprouted in downtown over the past 20 years.
A small town of 18,000, with scenic charm — the Assabet River runs through downtown — traffic backups were a welcome headache.
Dave Dodge, a 36-year-old school therapist, said while his hometown has “gotten classier” in the past 20 years, Hudson has the spirit of a gritty mill town that can survive a corporate downsizing. But he’s concerned for the Intel workers facing the loss of their jobs, many of whom he believes are older and have children, and will find it difficult to get new work.
“That’s a lot of anguish that they have to deal with,” Dodge said.
As long as big bu$ine$$ is happy we don't care.
*******************************
Intel originally received a smaller tax package from the state in 1999 worth some $35 million, in exchange for adding 450 jobs and investing $700 million in Hudson facilities. The town itself gave Intel property tax breaks worth tens of thousands of dollars over the life of the deal.
By 2006, the chip maker had gone well past its target for receiving the tax break: creating more than 1,000 new jobs, and retaining a similar number of existing positions. By then it had also invested $2 billion in the chip factory.
So that year Massachusetts and Hudson agreed to significantly sweeten the tax deal. Intel said that it would continue to upgrade the plant — raising the total investment over time to as much as $6 billion to modernize it. In exchange it would receive tax credits worth 5 percent of its investment, or up to $300 million.
Despite the sweetened deal, Intel began shrinking its head count in Hudson. The company has since reduced employment to about 1,545 jobs in the Central Massachusetts town, down from 2,200 in 2006.
There was no clawback provision, and Intel intuited it!
The pending plant closing would cut Intel’s current employment in Hudson nearly in half. But for now, Hudson and the company noted that Intel has so far more than met its original commitment for the tax deal.
“They have exceeded our promises to us and our expectations,” said Michelle Ciccolo, Hudson’s director of community development.
And now they are leaving?
--more--"
"Intel will close Mass. plant, cut 700 jobs" by Hiawatha Bray | Globe Staff, September 12, 2013
The world’s leading maker of computer chips is closing its only factory in Massachusetts, eliminating up to 700 high-paying manufacturing jobs in one of the largest job cuts to hit the state in recent years.
I'm sure this state can absorb them and keep on growing.
Intel Corp. said on Thursday that its plant in Hudson is using outdated technology to make older generations of computer chips used in low-end applications, which do not generate as much profit as its higher-end microprocessors that are used in PCs.
What, $2 BILLION a QUARTER not enough?
“The facility and the site do not meet the requirements that we need,” said Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy.
I thought we gave you tax loot to upgrade. WTF?
The Hudson closing is a blow to manufacturing in the state, which has undergone decades of downsizing to re-emerge as a smaller but still highly competitive industry.
That's odd because nearly every Boston Globe report on the state economy always says manufacturing grew -- or used to these last five years or so.
High-tech manufacturing accounts for nearly one in every three factory jobs in Massachusetts, and many of those pay high wages — $80,000 a year or more, according to a recent Northeastern University report on the sector. And the Intel jobs would be at the higher end of the industry scale.
Related: Sunday Globe Special: Tech Bubble Bursting
It just did.
“In terms of these people and their families, and the town of Hudson, this is a major blow,” said the author of the Northeastern report, economist Barry Bluestone, who noted that overall job growth in Massachusetts has slowed in recent months. “These workers who lose their jobs will not have an easy time finding a job somewhere else.”
Then my corporate press is lying to me about the job market?
Since when is the loss of 305,000 jobs in a week considered good growth in the job market anyway?
The plant closure also represents a setback to Governor Deval Patrick’s major effort to build up manufacturing in Massachusetts by supporting companies that produce sophisticated products that are less prone to competition from low-cost operators overseas.
He's on his way out anyway, and this puts a point on his legacy of failure.
Until recently, manufacturing employment had been stable in Massachusetts, with pockets of employers adding jobs and some companies even complaining they were having trouble finding qualified applicants to replace retiring workers.
Going to need some more H1-Bs then, huh? I didn't know decades of downsizing was consider stable, with pockets of employers adding some jobs. What rank journali$m!
The Patrick administration Thursday pledged to help any laid-off Intel workers find jobs.
Where?
“While we are obviously disappointed by today’s news, we know that our manufacturing industry is on the rise in Massachusetts and will continue to play a significant role in the success of our economy,” said Gregory Bialecki, the state’s economic development chief.
Has anyone tested state officials for drugs? Or is lying just part of the job qualifications?
Bluestone agreed that even though the 700 jobs are a big loss, the manufacturing industry in Massachusetts is not facing another period of contraction.
Actually, according to the unemployment figures, we are!
“Just because Intel is closing a shop doesn’t mean that we’re turning into Detroit here,” said Bluestone.
See: Sunday Globe Special: Detroit Gone to the Dogs
Yeah, it couldn't happen here.
Also see: Detroit may get federal aid; financial bailout is unlikely
Do you know what chump change means?
Yup, bankers get bailouts; cops, teachers, and firefighters get f***ed.
Intel said it plans to close the Hudson facility by the end of 2014 but hopes to soften the blow by trying to find another technology company that would buy the plant and continue making chips there.
Why would ANYONE buy an OUTDATED PLANT that HURTS PROFITS?
The company also operates a research and development facility in Hudson employing additional 850 workers. It will not be affected by the job cuts.
So we are told.
So how much in tax breaks did it cost us to keep those jobs here?
Home of former governor A. Paul Cellucci, Hudson is a former mill town that in the 19th century attracted waves of immigrants to work in its many shoe factories. In more recent years, it prospered as the early computer industry grew up in suburban Massachusetts around the old Digital Equipment Corp., based in nearby Maynard.
The Intel plant was built in 1994 by Digital in its waning days for $425 million to produce its highly touted Alpha chip, one of the now-defunct company’s last-gasp efforts to keep up with a rapidly changing computer industry.
Wow, deja vu in the Hudson.
Though more powerful than the best Intel processors of the era, Alpha failed to win converts among computer makers because it was incompatible with many common software programs.
You would have thought that someone in the executive suites would have saw that, or were they just concerned with pocketing loot first?
The failure of the Alpha led to Digital’s exit from the chipmaking business, and Digital sold the Hudson plant and related properties to Intel in 1997 for $700 million. Digital itself was acquired by Compaq a year later, ending a 40-year run as one of the most storied names in the computer industry.
And now the Hudson’s factory run itself appears to be over....
--more--"
Good luck with the unemployment.
Also see:
Massachusetts' Lost Decade of Jobs
Those Are the (Tax) Breaks in Massachusetts
Just a massive transfer of wealth to those that already have money as the rest of us see austerity.
Related:
Boston agrees to $7.8m tax deal for Filene’s project
Developer wins tax break on Filene’s site
Despite objections, Red Sox win rights to street use
"Dunkin’ Brands Group, the corporate parent of Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin-Robbins, is exploring options for relocating its headquarters, but will probably stay in Canton if the town extends a tax break, a Canton official said."
Looks like extortion to me.
Doesn't Dunkin' make enough money already?
Let them leave. It will open up room for new coffee businesses.
"Bristol-Myers Squibb sets $250 million Devens expansion" by Erin Ailworth | Globe Staff, April 12, 2013
Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., the global biopharmaceutical company, said Thursday that it will launch a $250 million expansion of its manufacturing complex in Devens and nearly double the size of its workforce there.
The expansion will add space for developing biotechnology drugs, called biologics, and for manufacturing those products for clinical trials, a requirement of the drug approval process....
The planned additions will also help Bristol-Myers Squibb exceed the commitments it made to state and local officials who wooed the company to Massachusetts in 2006 with the offer of roughly $100 million in tax breaks and other incentives....
How many billions in profit did they make last year?
--more--"
Yes, welcome to the wonderful world of biologics.
Also see: The Therapeutic Rip-Off
Maybe this will make you feel better:
"Life Sciences Center pays off in jobs, new tax revenues" June 28, 2013
So says my agenda-pu$hing paper.
Governor Patrick once projected the $1 billion scheme, launched in 2008, would create 250,000 jobs over 10 years.
That's what it was, all right.
Even without the economy’s collapse, that forecast was beyond wishful thinking. But it also shouldn’t cancel out what the center has accomplished.
Sigh.
Besides job growth, researchers found that the $360 million the state has spent so far has generated $1 billion in spending by private companies. Eight out of 10 of the world’s largest pharmaceutical firms are now doing business in Massachusetts. New workers are paid, on average, $105,000, and are expected to pay more than $93 million in income and sales taxes to the state over the next five years.
With how many more millions in tax breaks?
It can often be hard to gauge the effectiveness of government incentives to entice businesses to expand or move into the state, but the life-sciences initiative appears to be making the grade, thanks to its efforts to cultivate an ecosystem that starts with world-class universities, provides a fertile environment for small start-ups, and, in turn, attracts larger corporations that prize being in close proximity to breakthrough science. This cluster has created jobs at a faster pace than any other sector in the state over the past decade....
I'm sick of the agenda-pu$hing pimping and cheerleading. You guys got a pill for that?
Consequently, each dollar in tax incentives awarded is expected to generate $1.66 in added tax revenue....
They told us the same lies about the Hollywood tax credits, too.
If true, it makes you wonder why these programs are $uch lo$ers and why we need budget cuts to services.
--more--"
Related:
The 10 most influential women in biotech
Proving it is cla$$ that is the true divide, not sex, race, or sexual orientation, you know, the i$$ues the corporate pre$$ constantly throws at us.
Why we’re a magnet for life sciences
I can only gue$$ why.
Btw, Massachusetts taxpayers, that biotech money was all borrowed so $ome bankers are getting monthly debt interest payments to sustain them, even though "often, years of drug development and the drawn-out approval process ultimately lead nowhere."
See what can happen with money on your side?