Word: albertism
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...income tax credit with the understanding that it was "unlikely" the company would pay any income tax during those 10 years. The state spent $600,000 to train Seaboard's workers. The company received grants and low-interest loans to finance a waste-pretreatment plant. (Remember the one in Albert Lea?) The company was excused from paying $2.9 million in real estate taxes...
Meanwhile, back in Minnesota, Seaboard's local president was reassuring newspapers that the Albert Lea plant would remain open...
...just Oklahoma's subsidies that persuaded Seaboard to relocate. The Albert Lea work force was unionized; wages had risen to $19,100 a year--still $3,100 below their level in 1983, but too rich for Seaboard's blood. Guymon, by contrast, promised low-wage, nonunion labor. Also, Seaboard had decided it wanted to raise its own hogs for slaughter, not just buy them from farmers. Minnesota banned corporate hog farms. Oklahoma had had a similar ban but had repealed it before Seaboard came along...
When Seaboard moved on to Guymon, it left behind in Albert Lea the abandoned hog-slaughtering building, empty parking lots, a waste-treatment plant that now operates at only 50% of capacity and higher sewer bills to pay for it. And when Seaboard walked, the state had to come up with some $700,000 to retrain displaced workers or help them find new jobs...
...Oklahoma, it was starting to seem like deja vu all over again. The $21 million that state and local governments put up to bring Seaboard to the Panhandle was just the start. Guymon, like Albert Lea, couldn't supply the work force required by Seaboard. In time the company would need workers by the thousands. That's because the turnover rate in all processing plants runs close to 100% a year owing to the low wages. This slaughterhouse, one of the world's largest, will eventually kill an average of eight hogs a minute, 24 hours a day, 365 days...