Red meat political news is again in desperately short supply this morning, so we'll turn to the trusty WCF back burner to scrape up a SE story/puff piece which didn't quite make the cut over the weekend:
Friday's Standard-Examiner breathlessly announced that the Utah Governor's Office of Economic Development (GOED) has successfully "greased the skids" with sufficient taxpayer
We dunno about the rest of ya's, but Boss Godfrey's certainly crowing about landing the Home Depot phone bank gig:
Mayor Matthew Godfrey said the recruitment of The Home Depot is a major economic development accomplishment for Ogden.So what about it O Gentle Ones? Good news for the Ogden economy and something to cheer about? Or just more crappy, Godfrey-style, lo-pay call center jobs?
"We couldn't have been more impressed with The Home Depot team and are thrilled they selected Ogden," Godfrey said in a prepared statement. "We are confident our work force will exceed their expectations and help them achieve the success for which they are renowned. It's been a pleasure working with them, and we look forward to a very long-term relationship."
30 comments:
Let's hope so. Bringing in some potential jobs is always good. Ibhave an almost twenty year old still looking for a job. Hopefully they are not like Toys R Us and don't hire all the old ladies in town to unload their trucks and stock the shelves.
"Good news for the Ogden economy and something to cheer about? Or just more crappy, lo-pay call center jobs?"Six of the one, half dozen of the other, I'd say.
"Or just more crappy, lo-pay call center jobs."
Doesn't matter. If people in need of work apply for and get them, then they're not for them "crappy, lo-pay jobs," they're "Thank god, I got a job!" jobs. I'm very glad they're coming.
And good on anyone and everyone involved in convincing them Ogden is the place they wanted to be.
Aren"t we approaching the 2 year anniversary of Godfreys announcement of a Mexican import store coming soon to Ogden?
What's going to be really funny will be when when Brandon Stephenson comes from behind in the Ogden Mayoral Race and beats Mike Caldwell,
due to Stephenson's lockstep Mormon wardhouse base, and then sticks
Matthew Godfrey up Ogden City's backside, by appointing Godfrey to the Ogden Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) post.
Your blogmeister's been driving around town all day today, checking out
lawnsigns; and guess which ones are now being displayed in all the
"lay" Ogden Mormon eclesiastical ward "leaders' yards?
That's right...
Stephenson and Safsten lawnsigns are out there in aggravating abundance.
a crappy lo-pay job can be a curse rather than a blessing, if you have to work 4 and 1/2 days to pay for day care and the commute -- that doesn't leave much at all for anything at all - couple loaves of bread a jar of peanut and cheap candles ...
js
BB
Exactly right, BB. One more reason to loathe the Right Wing socialists, Repubican and democratic parties alike, who seem hell-bent to destroy the American Middle Class!
I know, BB. I have a kid doing that. But somethin's better than nothin' she figures. And generally that's true. Though I know there are certain circumstances in which someone on wellfare say loses money by going to work because they make like five dollars too much to qualify for subsidized day care, which is nuts.
Still, there are people working low pay jobs for whom that income is the only income they have access to, and they manage, especially if they're single with no children, or are part of a working couple, to get by on it , check to check, so long as nobody gets sick. If it didn't matter to them, a lot, there wouldn't be a surplus of people applying for the jobs. So, once again, I'm glad those jobs are coming. Bet every one of them gets filled and they have a file of applicants to call when someone leaves. These are, as a rule, for obvious reasons, often high-turnover jobs.
Comments:
The Lifetime manufacturing expansion in CLEARFIELD is good news, but the Home Depot telephone center in OGDEN is not.
We were told that the reason Godfrey wasted our BDO revenues was to attract HIGH PAYING jobs to Ogden. Now, the diminutive fraud is crowing about bottom of the barrel LOW PAYING jobs. After wasting BDO revenues, now prime manufacturing space at BDO is also being wasted.
691 jobs, of which 181 will pay 125% of the Weber County average wage. Guess what the rest will pay? I'm guessing minimum wage.
So while high schoolers who want to drop out and itinerant fruit pickers will rejoice at having a phone stuck in their ear all day, regular taxpayers will now have to pick up the tab for 700 folks that will not pay their way, not to mention all their kids. Figure 2100 more people who take more in services than they provide in taxes. And we are paying Home Depot incentives to do this to us.
It's a disaster. Stupidity, no matter how often it is repeated, is never seen as such, by the stupid. What else can we expect from our corporato-fascist leaders, who are bought and paid for by the real estate scum?
Any info on the effect of plastics manufacturing in our Great dirty air Basin?
Danny,
Youhit the nail on the head when you made the observation "more people who take more in services than they provide in taxes"
Just curious, has anyone seen the Geigers around. They seem to have fallen off the radar. Don't see there product around much either. Wondering if it's gaining market or DOA.
In a side bar note in the paper the day they were bragging about the Home Depot relocation there was another story. The armored car company that re-builds ordinary cars into armored cars for the whole world has move to Centerville after being encouraged to move to make room for the IRS building. Wish we could have found a way to keep that world known company around. After the loss of those jobs what will our net gain of jobs will turn out to be.
Pretty sad commentary when you really stop to think about it, our city’s BD Dept. expectations as to what constitutes a success. After thinking the announcement through it appears to me that the only good news is that the city has rented out some more of the business park and as such will be getting more lease revenues. The bad news is the once again low paying jobs. As Danny suggests it will only cost more than it generates. Pretty sad too that the city administration would pound on their chests (while the state did most of the heavy lifting per the news article) on something so economically un-lifting for the city. This deal is like putting lipstick on a pig.
Speaking of breathless economic announcements, don't forget this one from last week about "UtopiaCompressions":
http://www.standard.net/stories/2011/10/10/tech-company-opens-ogden-office
Call me a cynic, but when a very small, new technology company promises 3 to 5 jobs now and 40 after five years, I'm inclined to focus more on the near-term projection than the long term. According to this company's web site, even its main office in California employs only about 20. The company must be highly dependent on one or more DOD contracts and the image compression/analysis business must be highly competitive these days. Even if the company is a success they'll probably get swallowed up within five years. So I don't see how anyone can make a prediction for the year 2016.
Boohoo! Ogden is getting jobs. How awful. Nothing good can be allowed to happen until after Godfrey leaves. You people are pathetic.
Nonsense. You seem to be assuming that hundreds of people now elsewhere will flock to Ogden with their families in tow to get these low-paying jobs. Most of the people I know working entry level food service jobs, or call center jobs, are from the area. They're not driving in from Kansas or California or Texas. They're here now with bills to pay and families to feed. Tonight.
And entry level low pay jobs are held, and sought by, all kinds of people, not as you arrogantly put it "itinerant fruit pickers." [ Want to know what they're lives are like, I can recommend a book for you: Ted Conover, Coyotes.] Also people needing a second income for their family, so they become two income households, often necessary just to keep their heads above water. And people holding second jobs [since call centers often have shifts that work after the traditional work day is over at other businesses]. I know some of those, putting in 70 hours a week to make ends meet, or trying to. And yes, high school dropouts who've done something incredibly stupid by dropping out. So, having done something young and stupid, what're you recommending, that it'd be better to have them here with no jobs at all than a call center job if they can land one?
Danny, you're sometimes on target in re: city government, but this post makes you sound like one arrogant snob. Not everyone can get or hold a high paying job all the time. In a down economy, which you may have noticed we've been in for some time, it's all they can do to find any work. I know call center workers and burger flippers who are students working to put themselves through college or a trade school program. Others working, as noted above, second jobs to pay their family's bills, or wives working because their husband's hours have been cut, or their pay was cut, or they've been flat laid off.
Sneering at entry level and low pay jobs because the people who apply for them, who work them, have had the temerity to have families, and to live in Ogden is arrogant snobbery, plain and simple.
A healthy community has jobs available all across the income spectrum, from very well paying to moderately well-paying, to entry level minimum wage. All across the spectrum. And I'll be damned if I ever get to the point where I start sneering at people needing work to pay their bills and to take care of their families because they've found low paying jobs to enable them to do that because that was all they could find.
Welcome to Ogden, Home Depot call center. And if you have a few hundred more jobs you don't know where to locate, bring 'em here.
Please.
Dan, it seems pretty clear, was questioning not the benefit of jobs coming to Ogden now, but the value of enthusiastic predictions about how many jobs will arrive some years into the future [" I'm inclined to focus more on the near-term projection than the long term."] . Not a word in his post, so far as I can see, complaining about or objecting to in any way the company locating part of its operations here, just a caution about Rosy Scenario predictions about what it will mean in terms of new jobs half a decade ahead.
Seems prudent advice to me. Such predictions by the city government about job creation have, after all, often fallen flat in the past. Maybe five years from now there will be 40 jobs in Ogden. Maybe 75. Or maybe just 5 or 10. No way to know, and imprudent to claim with certainty that the higher numbers will happen. Hope they do, but we can't know until it happens or it doesn't. That's all. So a little healthy skepticism about predictions half a decade ahead doesn't seem amiss to me, and the only whining going on is coming from you. Really, Dan's post struck me as just another way of repeating that old bit of folk wisdom: "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush."
Guess the jobs could have gone over seas and "we" could complain about that instead
I'm not knocking low end jobs or the people who fill them. I myself have delivered newspapers, worked a cash register, and done clean up work. And I still run a shovel quite well.
My point is that low end jobs are not something to crow about, or to throw public money to attract. And as far a public services, they take more than they pay for. So it that way, it's a loss, not a gain.
As far as the tech jobs Dan refers to, those are the kind we want. In sum, Godfrey's efforts at bringing jobs have been negligible at best, and very costly at that.
Maybe we need more IRS jobs....yeah thats the ticket...more government loafers sitting on thier brains
Scuse me? IRS pays a "living" wage, offers health and life insurance, and if you don't make the grade (meet the numbers) you don't come back -- it's not for loafers.
js
BB
Exactly right. It appears that somebody doesn't like the IRS in general, and unfairly demeans the relatively high quality folks who work for the IRS.
Right....A living wage paid by whom?
Yes the federal government… the shining light of efficiency...on the backs of everyone else as they enjoy the finest healthcare, retirement and other bennies on the backs of the taxpayers….starts at the top and rolls down through Congress…built in job preservation.
Well i do not know how to respond. You seem to dislike anyone who is paid by the government. Does that disdain include the military or those who work to maintain weapons systems? Are you expecting an apology for those who were able to maintain a middle class life because of their employer? Is there anyone who draws a government salary you respect or is it just a general hate for everyone? I bet some of your family, friends and neighbors work for the government.
Thats quite a stretch and the answer is no to all of that.... ., especially the military!it was a gut comment on government greasing the skids and taxpayer payoffs….I plainly think the government is way too big….more government jobs is about the same thing that all the complaining about greasing things…is it really helping the state of the economy?....seems its great as long as it’s in “our” back yard…but the money has to come from somewhere. I’m sure there’s 10% fat out there that could be cut out and really help this country’s financial problems, no? My apologies if I have offended anyone. Just tired of fat cats telling us about how to fix the country yet they fail to be part of the solution….and I have written many a letter to many a legislator stating just that…with typical politician run around answers.
Sorry again all…back to the sidelines
This is really in reply to Smaatguy --> you just go on happily thinking plainly and let those critical and logical thinkers figure out what to do, okay?
js
BB
Sounds Like good news but the person who wrote the article is certainly cynical. I certainly do not know why anyone would not like the idea of more jobs in utah and not all call center jobs are low paying. Seems to me we should embrace more employment in Utah and be greatful for companies who expand or move here.
There certainly is lots of inefficiency in the government and waste. Of course people employed by the government do not mind because they are paid much more thathan thathay
actually government jobs pay at a much higher rate than public sector jobs for doing comparable work also government workers seem to be on vacation every other day .
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