As Foxconn changes US manufacturing plans, job promises fall short
- Foxconn’s Wisconsin plant will now make small screens for smartphones and tablets, rather than large-screen TVs
- The facility had 178 employees on board as of December, missing its first year-end hiring target of 1,040 jobs
It has been 18 months since Foxconn Technology Group, the world’s largest electronics contract manufacturer, announced to great fanfare that it was building a US$10 billion factory to make television screens on farmland in southeastern Wisconsin in the United States.
The plan was as big as it was audacious: Fuelled with billions in taxpayers subsidies, the Taiwanese company, formally known as Hon Hai Precision Industry, would build a 22 million square-foot campus, filled with 13,000 highly paid workers. In the process, it would transform the sleepy village of Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, into a hi-tech international manufacturing hub.
But a year and a half later, a central question remains: Where are the jobs?
Foxconn had only 178 employees on board as of December, missing its first year-end hiring target of 1,040 jobs and leaving millions of dollars in incentives on the table.
Billed as the largest greenfield investment by a foreign-based company in US history based on job creation, the promises in the July 2017 memorandum of understanding between the state of Wisconsin and Foxconn were unequivocal. The project would create 13,000 jobs by 2032 on the sprawling Racine County site, at an average annual salary of nearly US$54,000.
In return, the state offered Foxconn US$3 billion in tax credits and other state incentives.