Carrier got state incentive$ while laying off hundreds in East TN

[guruoo]

http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051009/BUSINESS01/510090362

Sunday, 10/09/05
Carrier Corp. takes away more than it gives

Maker of air conditioners got economic incentives to expand West Tennessee plant while it was laying off hundreds in East Tennessee.

By BUSH BERNARD
Staff Writer

The night before a handful of state and local officials gathered in Collierville in late August to recognize Carrier Corp.'s $250 million plant expansion and the 300 jobs it will create in West Tennessee, about 800 Carrier employees halfway across the state in Morrison were quietly being given pink slips.

The layoffs were the latest for Carrier, which has eliminated about 3,500 jobs in Tennessee in the past three years, shuttering its International Comfort Products air-conditioning plant in Lewisburg in 2002 and its Morrison plant last month.


But the Farmington, Conn., company still qualifies for state-funded business expansion job training grants because it is adding the 300 new jobs in Collierville — 15 miles from Memphis — where the company employs 2,500. "It irks me," Lewisburg Mayor Bob Phillips said. "I think it's a slap in the face of our workers down here who lost $16-an-hour jobs."

Ordinarily, a company that shuts down one operation in the state and then expands a similar operation elsewhere in the state isn't eligible for state tax credits or other perks that go with business expansion, Tennessee Economic and Community Development Commissioner Matt Kisber said.

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[Lars39]

1. The plant in McMinnville was union and the workers *very* pro-Kerry.