Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves announced in December that the state will invest over $100 million in economic development projects—projects that have created record-breaking numbers of jobs—funded by Mississippi taxpayers.
As mentioned in a previous column, these projects include the $20
billion xAI Data Center in Southaven, the $10 billion Amazon Web
Services project in Madison County, and the $10 billion Compass Data
Center in Lauderdale County. Site Selection Magazine’s Alexis
Elmore recently noted: “In less than two years, Mississippi has
captured the three largest capital investment projects in the state’s
over 200-year history.
“This wasn’t a matter of faltering on legacy industries—such as advanced
manufacturing; aerospace & defense; agriculture; automotive;
chemicals; distribution & logistics; energy; and forestry—but rather
embracing a technology-driven economy…(t)he most enticing
tool on hand when it comes to securing multi-billion-dollar
investments? In Mississippi, it comes in the form of incentives,” Elmore
observed.
The same was true when Mississippi competed with other Southern states
for high-tech jobs in automotive manufacturing, as the old Detroit-based
car-building jobs moved south partly due to rising union-influenced
labor costs.
Democratic and Republican state leaders urged taxpayers to incentivize
those jobs, and they did. Labor unions followed those jobs south, eager
to replace the union dues they had lost in Detroit.
However, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in 2023 that
“union membership in the South has been declining, reporting that
unionization in the South was 4.5%, which is more than 8 percentage
points lower than the national average. South Carolina had
the lowest union membership rate in the country at 2.3%.
"Some states in the South, like Florida, Mississippi, Virginia, and
Louisiana, have seen a decline in union density. Unions in the South
face many challenges, including a culture that resists collective
bargaining, right-to-work laws, and political leaders
who are hostile to unions,” the agency said.
Mississippi is a right-to-work state. However, that hasn’t prevented
Mississippi from thriving in developing automobile manufacturing over
the past 25 years, producing well over half a million new vehicles
annually, according to the Mississippi Development
Authority.
Now, Rankin County Republican State Sen. Josh Harkins, who chairs the
Senate Finance Committee, has introduced legislation to protect the
investments of state and local taxpayers in economic development
projects that rely on taxpayer incentives. The bill ensures
that Mississippi workers are entitled to a private ballot for any
unionization vote.
In a recent op-ed, Harkins explained: “Senate Bill 2202 is
straightforward: for companies that choose to accept future state
economic development incentives, any decision about union representation
should be made through a private, secret-ballot election. The
bill does not prohibit employees from organizing. It does not outlaw
unions. It does not interfere with an employee’s right to choose union
representation if a majority wants it. It simply sets an expectation
that the decision is made in a way that protects
(worker) privacy.”
The bill also addresses so-called “neutrality agreements” that restrict
information during unionization efforts. Harkins says his goal is to
“level the playing field.”
Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama have enacted legislation to protect
taxpayer investments in economic development projects. Organized labor
criticized the leaders of those states, citing federal labor relations
laws that previously protected union organizers.
Harkins’ bill requires companies that voluntarily accept taxpayer-funded
economic incentives to ensure secret-ballot elections for union
activities related to those incentives, or risk losing those benefits.
“It is limited to future incentive agreements and future organizing
efforts tied to those incentives. Existing collective bargaining
agreements, currently unionized workplaces, and subcontractors are not
affected. The bill follows Mississippi’s long-standing
practice of attaching performance and compliance standards to public
incentive packages,” Harkins said.
“States regularly condition incentives on job creation thresholds, wage
benchmarks, capital investment commitments, and regulatory compliance.
These guardrails aren’t symbolic — they protect the integrity of the
state’s return on investment and give policymakers
and taxpayers a clear way to evaluate risk and accountability.”
Taxpayers on the hook for economic development incentives will welcome that protection.
Sid Salter is a syndicated columnist. Contact him at sidsalter@sidsalter.com.
1 comment:
$50 bet that xAI and AWS will employ illegal alien labor to build the data centers and then import H1B’s from India to run them. I’m using their operations in TX, WA, and VA as proof for my assessment.
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