Just last week, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation or WEDC rejected the application of electronics maker Foxconn for tax subsidy after the company did not hire the number of employees it promised but instead built a Gen 10.5 LCD factory.i
Broken promise to Wisconsin
The company, instead, built a Gen 6 factory in order to manufacture phone screens. This was done instead of the original plan to build a larger factory made for TV displays. The company only hired 550 employees instead of the 13,000 that it initially promised. It was found out that 281 of these employees did not even qualify for the terms of the contract.
According to a new report by The Verge, it was confirmed that the alleged Gen 6 factory is currently not actually being used in order to manufacture anything at all. In a recent interview with Wisconsin Secretary of the Department of Administration known as Joel Brennan with The Verge, it was stated that the Gen 6 that has recently been discussed and also built in Mount Pleasant is actually not similar to the other Gen 6 fabs from around the world.
Investigation of fake factory
According to an article by Gizmodo, basically, the factory is fake. It was apparently a building but there is nothing reportedly being made inside. According to Wisconsin's Division of Executive Budget and Finance report, not only has the known Foxconn company not purchased any of the needed manufacturing equipment in order to make LCDs, it's just using the whole factory as a basic storage facility.
It was said that if any manufacturing were to happen within the facility, the factory would then only be able to accommodate just the final assembly of components like LCDs and some other phone parts. Basically, they would just be shipped to the factory and assembled there.
It was also stated that no outside experts were consulted and there also appears to be no trace of any thorough discussion about how it can eventually affect the whole community, nor if it was viable considering the LCD manufacturing was something that they have not yet even explored in Wisconsin before.
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Foxconn Wisconsin tried to hire college kids to cover up the lack of employees
To make things worse, Foxconn allegedly just hired some local college students along with recent graduates working on visas in an attempt to try and bolster its employment numbers. This was revealed in an investigation led by The Verge.
Foxconn was reportedly not able to hire enough people in order to get its desired subsidies, so a lot of those that were recently hired were then laid off once the whole deadline had passed. There were reportedly many of them that were then hired but did not have any work to do.
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This article is owned by Tech Times
Written by Urian Buenconsejo
