No jobs, no money for Foxconn

Much has changed since Foxconn first announced plans for a huge production facility in southeast Wisconsin. What was going to employ 13,000 only employs hundreds. What was to become a huge facility for manufacturing large tv screens is now a storage facility. But what hasn’t changed is that Foxconn would not receive any of our tax money in incentives until they reached certain benchmarks. That’s why the state this month told Foxconn it could not apply for state tax subsidies until it renegotiates its deal with the state. No jobs, no state money. That is the way the deal started, and that is how it remains. But Foxconn seems shocked the state isn’t ponying up. They shouldn’t be. The original deal called for more than 2000 jobs by the end of this year. The state says the company has only created a fraction of that, fewer than 300. There is some evidence Foxconn hired hundreds in an effort to boost the jobs numbers, but gave its new employees nothing to do before laying them off. Foxconn seems to want to change the rules, but so far isn’t willing to go back to the table and renegotiate the deal. Until they do, the state is right to stick by the deal they all signed and refuse to provide subsidies for jobs that don’t exist.