COMIDA adds 120 new jobs - the breakdown
So screams the headline. The important question is, what kind of jobs, When will they be added and will they replace jobs which are lost locally?
What exactly are we measuring and how are we assured success?
The Headline screams, we are adding new jobs. The question is, does this offset the jobs we are losing?
You can read the article in the D&C (quotes below from the article). Here is my take:
Datrose
Adding 30 full-time equivalent jobs over next three years. It is an outsourcing company - I suppose it takes jobs that companies outsource (i.e. move off their books) and does exactly what with them?
Datrose Chief Financial Officer Jerome Underwood said the expansion comes as the company is using technology in its outsourcing business to try to counteract the wage advantages of the massive outsourcing industry based in India.
According to its application with the county, Datrose’s expansion will let it expand the services it offers to clients in the finance/administrative area.
So - a company outsources it’s back office (i.e. moves the job off their books) to save costs. That job is picked up by Datrose. At least, that is what it seems like.
Cost to Taxpayer? I’ll update later as soon as I see exactly what the benefit package was. Net gain of jobs? TBD
Adecco
Adecco, a temporary staffing and outsourcing company, got tax breaks approved for its planned $560,000 call and data processing center at the Rochester Tech Park in Gates. Adecco said it will add 89 jobs to the 16 it has locally.
Great. A Call Center. Maybe they can rehire all those Frontier Call Center workers whose jobs moved to Florida. The question is when will these jobs be on line? Will all 89 happen this year or, like Datrose, spread over 3 years? That chunk of information seems missing from the article. This was also an outsourcing company, so which local company is shifting jobs to this center?
Does this add jobs to our region or just shift them around?
LogicalSolutions.net
In other COMIDA business, LogicalSolutions.net, a Web hosting and Web site creation business in Brighton, received tax breaks toward construction of a $2.1 million, 16,400-square-foot office in the Science Park on the city’s southeast side.
LogicalSolutions.net committed to adding the equivalent of 35 full-time jobs over the next three years.
Chief Executive Jim Salviski, who founded the company 13 years ago, said it’s growth has come through an aggressive acquisition strategy in which LogicalSolutions.net either relocated workers to Monroe County or moved the jobs here and hired locally to fill them.
Now on the surface this sounds promising. For Brighton, certainly more promising than the Wellesley Inn or the the Harley school. This looks like we potentially are importing jobs into our region.
Overall - what are we measuring? Are we gaining jobs or just not losing them as fast? If the hallmark achievement is adding “outsourcing companies” jobs, that simply seems more of moving jobs from one company to another.
Who will follow-up and see where these companies are in a year?
Color me skeptical.
The rest of the COMDIA tax breaks are below the fold. I have no comment until I look a little deeper.
COMIDA also approved tax breaks for:
- A $7.2 million expansion of FedEx Ground Package System Inc. on Thruway Park Drive in Henrietta. The company plans to add 27 jobs through its 53,000-square-foot expansion.
- A 5,600-square-foot manufacturing expansion at Pharma-Smart International Inc., located on Winton Place. The maker of blood pressure screening systems plans to add six full-time positions.
- Two proposed child care facilities — Pride and Joy Quality Child Care Inc. at 5370 West Henrietta Road in Henrietta, and Doodlebugs on Fairport Nine Mile Road in Penfield — plan to create a total of 53 jobs.
- Sutherland Towing’s purchase of four new tow trucks. The Pittsford company plans to add four jobs within a year.
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I suppose it takes jobs companies outsource and does exactly what?
Pays crap with no benefits while the original workers go on unemployment. Sounds like a deal to me!
I worked for Datrose for a while, as a contractor to a big local company. Hourly work with no sick leave or vacation, and a pretty poor excuse for health insurance which I didn’t sign up for. Not something I would do if I had a choice.
Now, it does make sense to me for companies to take functions that they traditionally have done (like finance and administration) and move them to companies that have developed expertise in that area. Paychex is an example of a company that has developed expertise in a certain area and handles those functions for many other firms
However, here’s the difference: Paychex gives its employees benefits, and clearly has expertise in that area. Datrose currently has no expertise in that area, and provides very minimal benefits  and you wonder how a company that has no current expertise and provides minimal benefits will build up expertise. Oh, I know how they get that expertise … its the same people who did the job at one company, now they are on Datrose’s books with lower pay and without the same benefits. I would imagine that everyone working for Datrose (like when I worked for them) is looking for a better job.
Adecco call center? I have a friend who has worked at call centers, jobs with low pay and no benefits, and he hates it and leaves as soon as something better comes along.
Anyway, I agree with you, Stlo7, the Datrose and Adecco jobs don’t sound like the greatest jobs in the world, yes they are jobs, but they don’t rank up there in quality with the thousands of jobs eliminated at other firms in the last few years.
My point (well at least one of them) was asking about measuring job growth.
So if we are giving tax subsidies to companies who move jobs from one company to another - What are we gaining?
COMIDA gets to say in some annual report it increased jobs - No one reports the loss or or transfer of these job -
So in the end we lose out.
Personally I’m really excited about the new tow trucks we’re helping to buy with our tax dollars for the Pittsford towing company. At least this way when my car breaks down I’ll get to be towed in a brand spanken new rig.
Thanks Maggie for looking out for all of us.
Yes, I see we are looking at things slightly differently, and your point certainly is an important one. But even when jobs move from one company to another, so the number of employed is equal, the quality of the job (or actually, the quality of the compensation) decreases. Same number employed, but the workers are worse off.
Let me also point to that phrase you quoted about Datrose … “30 full-time equivalent jobs”. This could mean 60 half-time jobs, we just have no way of knowing, but here again the quality of the job isn’t the same as 30 full-time jobs at companies that provide benefits. And Datrose will do this over three years! What a boon to Rochester (not!)
Important point … Datrose is an outsourcing company. I worked for them briefly. You fill out your paperwork on the first day of work, you fax them your hours each week, and shortly thereafter a check arrives in the mail. Datrose does not need more space to hire 30 more workers because the workers don’t actually work at the Datrose building. Datrose probably doesn’t need more staff to handle the paperwork from 30 more workers, maybe (MAYBE) it needs another fax machine, but I just can’t see how Datrose needs a COMIDA grant in order to be able to expand by 30 full-time equivalent workers. Based upon what I know, COMIDA giving money to Datrose is a total waste … they don’t need large amounts of money to expand, unlike a business that actually houses its workers on-site and manufactures goods or provides services. What is this money going to be used for? Why couldn’t Datrose expand by 30 full-time equivalents without the COMIDA grant?
[...] also tries to dig into the recent COMIDA grants. I believe these are the same ones stlo7 covered here. When trying to dig into the murky world of giving COMIDA grants to shadowy LLC’s (Limited [...]
[...] like the Frontier call center and the long list goes one. All this loss despite COMIDA’s feel good job reports where we are adding Tow Truck drivers and Cabana boys to hand out towels to people who can afford [...]