Department of Economic and Community Development Commissioner Catherine Smith asked the state Bond Commission to borrow funds to pay Infosys a total of $18 million over the next 5 years, if the following conditions are met …
- $4 million if 200 jobs are created within two years and retained for two years;
- A second $4 million payment if 500 jobs in total have been created within the next three years, and then retained for two more years.
- A third $4 million payment if the job total reaches 1,000 created within the first five years, and if they are retained for another two years.
- And a final $2 million grant would be provided now to fund job training.
The deal was brokered by our new governor – Ned Lamont. On the campaign trail, he frequently bragged about how its going to bring 1,000 jobs to Hartford.
No matter how hard we try, not one person involved with this deal will comment on whether they know about the company’s employment practices in America, the record fine the company paid for violating Visa laws, … or even the company’s mission – to ship American data operations to India.
There is no way they can’t know about all of this. Wherever these guys show up, pink slips start flying for Americans. One of the most famous cases of this happened right here in CT. Over 200 workers at Northeast Utilities (now Eversource) were forced to train their replacements – Indian employees of Infosys – as a condition of receiving a severance.
The thing that’s really confusing to us is the $2 million training grant (which they get immediately). If their workers are here on Visas, that program stipulates that they need to be highly skilled or have skills that US workers don’t have. If that’s the case, then why do they need any training?
