GE to move Maine jobs overseas
General Electric plans to move approximately 500 jobs from Maine, Texas, South Carolina and New York to France, Hungary and China, according to a GE statement on Sept. 15.
According to the statement, GE is bidding on $11 billion of projects that require export financing. GE reached an agreement with a French export credit agency to provide a line of credit for global power projects. The line of credit will initially support potential orders in a number of international markets.
The Bangor Daily News reported that 80 jobs making power turbine components at GE’s plant in Bangor could be moved to France because the company no longer has access to funding from the Export-Import Bank, which underwrites loans that help foreign purchasers buy American goods. The Bangor facility, which employs 450, would remain open.
To access the required export credit for customers of its aeroderivatives turbines, GE will move its final assembly from the United States to Hungary and China.
GE went to a foreign export credit agency because authorization for the U.S. Export Import Bank expired July 1, according to the statement.
“We do not make today’s announcements lightly and, in fact, have done everything in our power to avoid making these moves at all, but Congress left us no choice when it failed to reauthorize the Ex-Im Bank this summer,” GE Vice Chairman John Rice said in the statement. “We know this will have an impact not only on our employees but on the hundreds of U.S. suppliers we work with that cannot move their facilities, but we cannot walk away from our customers.”
The announcement reignited a political debate about reauthorizing financing for the bank, and directed criticism from Democrats toward U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin, R-Maine, a critic of the bank, according to the Portland Press Herald. Poliquin has cited fraud and corruption within the program.
“It’s disappointing that a big Wall Street corporation, like GE, would use politically charged language as a cover to shipping jobs overseas,” Poliquin said in a written statement in the newspaper. “We, as the people of Maine and citizens of the United States, cannot complain about corporate welfare at the same time we turn our backs on government corruption. This is especially true when 70% of the loans — which are subsidized by the taxpayers — extended help (to) a select 10 of the largest corporations.”
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