Production workers here average $28.50 an hour... "What did we do wrong?" asked John Weber, sitting on a stool at his restaurant, Ye Old Fort Diner. well for starters, he might want to read the article
Posted on 12/28/2013 7:15:01 PM PST by Hojczyk
FORT EDWARD, New York — When General Electric moves jobs from its capacitor plant in this Hudson River town next year, worker Mark Rock figures he might have to leave, too.
About 200 jobs will head south as soon as September when GE sends local operations to Florida to cut costs. While New York has had successes in the constant geographical tug of war for jobs, manufacturing jobs like these have been dwindling for decades. People in this area south of the Adirondack Mountains are the latest to wonder what comes next.
"The high-paying jobs that we have now in the area are going to shrink," said Rock, a 41-year-year-old married father of two. "If I don't find something making at least 20 bucks an hour in New York state, then I'm skipping town."
The loss of manufacturing jobs is a national trend, but New York has felt the sting more than some other states. Paul Blackley, an economics professor at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, said New York state lost 42 percent of manufacturing jobs from 1990 through 2006. Over the same period, Florida lost 18 percent.
Blackley said there's no single reason for New York's drop, but business costs and an older infrastructure likely play a role.
"I think your tax climate, your labor costs, your old capital are probably three of the biggest factors, not only in this specific move, but a lot of the moves that you see out of New York state," he said.
The GE plant has sat by a narrow stretch of the Hudson River in this town of 6,000 since World War II. It makes electrical capacitors for power transmission systems and industrial uses.
(Excerpt) Read more at therepublic.com ...
This has to be Schenectady, right?
Nice country Fort Edward…..I left NYS in 1980…it will be Detroit in 20 years….Nothing much left upstate except farmers and government workers..
Couldn’t happen to a nicer state.
“About 200 jobs will head south” - only Republican conservatives are welcome. (just kidding)
High taxes + absolute control of democrats + insane public and private unions = NO JOBS
See Detroit, Camden, Chicago, Newark, Cleveland, Philly for more evidence...
No not Schenectady…it is North up near Glens Falls…Lake George…I was born in Schenectady…when I was a kid they had the American Locomotive Company..Great looking Locomotives..everything is pretty much gone…it looks like Detroit…GE makes its turbines there…only thing left of GE..one time employed 50,000 people in the area..left in 1980..
Kind of a sad joke, wonder how many other states it runs in?
GE basically made up their minds to vacate New York State after the state and the EPA pushed them to do a $500M dredging project to clean up PCBs in the Hudson River from the Hudson Falls plant.
I'm actually surprised they're moving somewhere else in the U.S. rather than overseas, considering what they went through in New York.
Chances are it will be a union shop no matter where it goes inside our borders. Big companies prefer dealing with the union over thousands of individuals.
There’s a TV commercial ad going around hawking the ‘new New York’.as tax friendly to business endeavors. Yeh, right. )O< ;{
When 42 % of your jobs leave the State something is wrong with the State. I should know I live in Maryland, practically nothing left here but Government.
Then there’s the clueless incoming mayor of NYC, too.
We getting the “new New York is tax friendly to business” TV ads all day here in Washington State.
Production workers here average $28.50 an hour... "What did we do wrong?" asked John Weber, sitting on a stool at his restaurant, Ye Old Fort Diner. well for starters, he might want to read the article
???
Which is why every major new automobile factory has been built in "right to work" states for last generation?
NY State has high taxes and oppressive regulations, thus high cost of living, thus high labor costs ($28.50 avg. wage for union jobs at this plant). Businesses are stupid to stay in NY if they can move somewhere else.
(Fort Edward and nearby areas are quite nice, too bad they are in NY state.)
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