Dell just won’t talk:
David Frink, a Dell spokesman, said Friday that “we are no longer providing specific site employment totals.” When pressed about the specific number of local jobs cut, Frink replied, “We are not engaging in additional dialogue on this subject.”
The Winston-Salem Journal’s Richard Craver crunches the numbers in an effort to come up with the number of workers laid off, but concludes the “community is likely to be limited to annual employment updates that could be several months or more than a year old when they are made public.”
Meanwhile, the High Point Enterprise, citing WXII sources, runs with the 300 figure.
As you can imagine, Winston-Salem Mayor Allen Joines looks on the bright side, saying “key piece of information is there still are 1,200 to 1,250 people working there.” But the Civitas Institute’s Chris Hayes sums it up well:
While we sympathize with the workers who lost their jobs, Dell’s announcement demonstrates the continuing failure of corporate welfare as an economic strategy.Time and time again, what seems like a great hope and promise of new jobs and industry to an area, incentives fail to live up to the lofty sales pitch politicians sold the public.”
The Lexington Dispatch agrees, saying “everyone needs to keep Dell in mind and realize business conditions can quickly change and make headlines turn from good news to bad.”
But then the paper goes on to say “(c)learly economic development officials are doing a good job of recruiting companies to Davidson County or encouraging ones already here to remain and expand,” citing a technology company that’s expanding with the help of $2.54 million in state money and $160,000 in county money.
It’s not Dell money, but it adds up, considering the fact that it seems like every month you hear about a new incentives package Davidson County economic developers are putting together for a particular company.
