Corporations pushing for job-creation tax breaks shield
U.S.-vs.-abroad hiring data
By Jia Lynn Yang,
Monday, August 22, 2011
Some of the countryfs best-known multinationals closely guard a number they
donft want anyone to know: the breakdown between their jobs here and abroad.
So secretive are these companies that they hand the figure over to government
statisticians on the condition that officials will release only an aggregate
number. The latest data show that multinationals cut 2.9 million jobs in
the United States and added 2.4 million overseas between 2000 and 2009.
Some of the same companies that do not report their jobs breakdown, including
Apple
and Pfizer,
are pushing lawmakers to cut their tax bills in the name of job creation in the
United States.
But experts say that without details on which companies are contributing to
job growth and which are not, policymakers risk flying blind as they try to
jump-start the hiring of American workers.
gItfs an important piece of information that the American people should
have,h said Ron Hira, an associate professor of public policy at the Rochester
Institute of Technology. gShould you listen to the kind of advice these
companies have about how to grow the economy when their record and their model
indicates theyfve cut jobs? . . . Or should we talk to people who
actually do create jobs in the United States?h
As the country faces an unemployment crisis, President Obama, lawmakers and
business lobbyists have all touted the countryfs biggest companies as critical
to creating
jobs.
The head of Obamafs
jobs council, General
Electric chief executive Jeff Immelt, said during a tour of a company plant
in Greensboro, S.C., that firms should be ready to answer questions from the
public.
gIf you want to be an admired company, you better know, you better have
accountability, and you better think through where the jobs are,h he said.
GE breaks out its employment numbers in company filings to the Securities and
Exchange Commission. In 2010, about 46 percent of GEfs 287,000 employees
worked in the United States, compared with 54 percent in 2000.
But many firms, including some whose executives have counseled Obama on the
economy, do not put their number of U.S. workers in their annual reports.
IBM
chief executive Sam Palmisano, has
met a number of times with the president, most recently in July at a lunch
with other executives to talk about jobs and the economy. IBM stopped giving its
U.S. head count in 2009.
gWe just made a policy that we would only break out global head count,h said
company spokesman Doug Shelton.
Data from before 2009 showed IBM rapidly shifting workers to India.
Dave Finegold, dean of the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations,
estimates that 2009, when the company stopped sharing its U.S. employment
figure, also marked the first time the company had more employees in India than
the United States. Finegold based his number on reports from the media,
third-party groups and former employees who have tried to track the number.
gIBM can do as it wishes, and the rest of us have to guess,h said Lee Conrad,
national coordinator for Alliance@IBM, a group trying to unionize IBM workers.
You wonft find Procter
& Gamblefs U.S. head count in its filings, either. When initially asked
for the number, company spokesman Paul Fox wrote in an e-mail: gWe do not track
nor report U.S.-specific jobs numbers vs. jobs overseas.h After it was pointed
out that P&Gfs chief executive, Bob McDonald, had cited such figures in a
Cincinnati Enquirer op-ed piece, Fox acknowledged that company did track that
data. The number of U.S. employees is 35,000 out of 127,000 total, or 28
percent.
Other companies that do not reveal their job breakdowns include Hewlett-Packard,
AT&T,
Apple and Pfizer, which stopped reporting the number in its SEC filings in
2000.
The latter two are part of a coalition of companies pushing for Congress to
give them a tax break on money they have parked overseas, saying that any money
brought back to this country would spur hiring.
There is no law requiring companies to reveal publicly where their employees
are based. Companies can choose to include the breakdown of jobs here and abroad
in their SEC filings for the benefit of shareholders. But they are required by
law to report the numbers to the Commerce Department,
which compiles a yearly report on total employment by U.S. multinationals.
Ray Mataloni, a staff researcher at the U.S.
Bureau of Economic Analysis, said the government gets the numbers only with
the agreement that it will not disclose firm-level data.
gI donft think itfs a question of companies feeling like theyfre hiding dirty
laundry by not giving this information out,h Mataloni said. gI donft think they
really have anything to hide, but I donft really know the logic of why thatfs
something they donft just put in their annual report.h
A few companies expressed worry about their competitors knowing too much
about their operations.
Scott N. Paul, executive director of the Alliance for American Manufacturing,
said itfs because of the politics.
gOutsourcing has become a lightning rod, and the media coverage theyfre
likely to get is unfavorable,h Paul said.
For chief executives of multinational companies who are used to answering
only to their shareholders, the countryfs jobs crisis has uncomfortably switched
the political spotlight onto their decisions about who they employ and where. It
has also thrown into relief the fact that when U.S. multinationals chase profits
and hire workers anywhere in the world, they become less tied to any one
country, including this one.
Immelt acknowledged last month that the health of a company such as GE is now
less connected to the U.S. economy, but he added that companies including GE
ggot carried awayh with outsourcing.
gIfm a GE leader first and foremost,h he said. gAt the same time . . . I work
for an American company.h
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