In a pair of letters sent to lawmakers, [Commerce Secretary Joe] Taylor is urging the S.C. General Assembly to pass legislation this session that would improve the state’s business climate.
Citing the success of the deal to land Boeing, Taylor wrote that “we can attract other, major economic development investment from companies such as Boeing by creating a more predictable and stable litigation environment with low and fair workers’ compensation rates, by protecting businesses from frivolous lawsuits and by bringing common sense back to our courtrooms.”
“Taking these steps will equate to more business for South Carolina and more jobs for our citizens,” Taylor added.
As Dub Taylor moaned in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, "Morons. I've got morons on my team."
Ol' Folksy's celebrating the leadership of the state's business development agency by a man who is stuck in the New South, on our knees industrial development model the state has been following since the 1880s.
Boeing didn't have a litigation problem that brought them to South Carolina, you nitwits. They came here because they'd already bought out the subcontractor in North Charleston and the state was willing to whore out the taxpayers for what has turned out to be nearly a billion dollars in subsidies. The company made a strategic decision years ago to outsource rather than fabricate everything internally. That it was willing to screw Seattle-area suppliers who'd served the company well since 1916- and then uproot its corporate HQ to Chicago because CEO Phil Condit didn't like flying- should put SC on notice that what Boeing can give, it can take away.
If Boeing had shut down the Everett plant and moved that here, Taylor and Folks would be justified in crowing. If Boeing laid off tens of thousands of Seattle-area workers and announced plans to hire thirty or forty thousand people in South Carolina, that'd be a triumph.
Boeing has 164,000 workers worldwide, give or take. The engineers' union, which tends to be the one to strike every few years when contract negotiations renew (it's one of those things that happen when companies play poker with their workers), amounts to about 25,000 people- all in the Seattle area. The average Boeing strike lasts a month. The company takes a short term hit but makes the loss back because its only meaningful competitor is Airbus. It's a binary world: if you're an airline and either company has a strike, your planes get delayed. North Charleston will be a backwater, an understudy, a backup, just as the Starbucks coffee grinder plant is, and the Google server plant is.
The fact remains, South Carolina is pursuing out of date strategies to attract companies that just want cheap workers to bolt things together. Screw the residents of the state: give BMW and Boeing land and tax breaks that will take decades to recover even as state services atrophy, look the other way when most of their workers are not real employees but contract workers (hello, BMW), and pray they don't pick up and leave when their factories are fully depreciated and they can get some other state to build them new ones.
Joe Taylor ought to resign in shame over the way he is willing to pimp the citizens of South Carolina. A 21st century economy is not one where your operating principle is to beg companies to come here on the promise you're willing to beggar your constituents' rights to access to redress when they are abused. In the new economy, workers's knowledge and ability to innovate is where the action lies. And they can, even under the Supreme Court's reactionary views, can go where they are most valued and life is most agreeable. Smart people don't migrate to low wage states.
In this century, companies that succeed- and stay- in SC are companies that can persuade their employees to want to live here and stay here. As long as South Carolina is perceived as a racist, reactionary, uniparty, head up its ass, homophobic, misogynist political/business culture, all you can be sure of is that the big, nameplate corporate recruits that enable politicos to declare victory and go home will stay here only as long as it suits them.
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