US Job Loss Is
Costa Rica's Gain
By Alex Leff , GlobalPost
For generations, coffee and sugar cane have
kept many of the working people employed in
this charming village plopped amid lush
green mountains and the smoke-spewing
Turrialba volcano 33 miles east of San Jose.
Now a new Firestone air springs plant has
opened up, which locals hope will slow the
flight of many of the areas nearly 80,000
inhabitants seeking work elsewhere.
However, as the globalization game often
plays out, what goes up in one town must
come down in another.
This time the one going down is in
Noblesville, Ind. In June 2008, managers at
the 63-year-old Firestone plant outside
Indianapolis announced they were shutting
down another casualty of the ailing auto
industry.
The Indiana plant employed more than 200
people, but this year phased out production
and cut jobs in three separate waves,
according to Tim Cottrell, president of
United Steelworkers of America Local 138 in
Noblesville.
Firestone has been transporting the
machinery over to other product plants in
Williamsburg, Ky., and Dyersburg, Tenn., as
well as to the Turrialba plant which was
inaugurated in April and is set to employ
about 130 people, said plant manager Alvaro
Murillo.
This could become a trend.
The computer chip giant Intel, which already
manufactures at least 20 percent of Costa
Ricas exports, could be expanding this year
to absorb production from plants that are
being shuttered in the U.S. and Asia,
according to business weekly El Financiero.
And these are not the only multinationals to
set up shop in Costa Rica.
Over the past decade, stable politics and a
highly qualified but low-paid labor force
have helped turn Costa Rica into a prime
location for foreign companies. Businesses
including Hewlett Packard,
PricewaterhouseCoopers and a host of major
medical suppliers and outsourced call center
operations have opened offices here more
than two dozen new ones a year, according to
the Costa Rican Investment board (CINDE).
These businesses, along with revenue from
tourism and real estate, are part of what
makes Costa Rica a leader in Latin America
in terms of per capita foreign direct
investment (FDI) considered an important
bloodline for developing nations. Last year
Costa Ricas FDI topped $2 billion. |
