AppleInsider Staff
The project was given final approval by the commission on Tuesday in a 4-1 vote, according to the Statesman. A new provision was added to the deal last week, requiring an average salary of $35,000 for the bottom 10 percent of Apple-employed workers, and a minimum of $11 per hour for contractors.
The deal was characterized as "in peril" just last week, as the Travis County Commissioners Court remained undecided on its own incentives tied to the project. Previously, the Austin City Council had approved its own $8.6 million grant, while the state will pitch in $21 million in incentives from the Texas Enterprise Fund.
Apple's plans call for a campus to be built in North Austin, where 3,665 new jobs will be created by 2025. The discounts offered by the three different government agencies require Apple to build an 800,000-square-foot office for $226 million.
Local officials initially chose to be aggressive in courting Apple and offering incentives because the company was looking at other potential locations for the facility. It was said that Phoenix, Ariz., was another city Apple was considering.
Apple's facilities in Austin, Texas, via WebProNews.
Apple's plans call for the facility to be built on 38 acres of land in Austin with at least a million square feet of office space. The facility will function as Apple's new "Americas Operations Center."
An analysis conducted by Travis County has projected that Apple's project will generate $15 million in benefits for the county over the 15-year term of the contract.
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
Chip Loder
Malcolm Owen
51 Comments
It's good that they added the salary requirements. Texas, as a whole, is an employers paradise. Nice to see someone coming down on the side of employees for once.
Hooray! So everybody wins.
I submit that this is NOT the job of the Austin City Counsil, this is usually nicely managed by something we like to call the "Free Market" system. I submit that the city councilmen can barely find their backsides with both hands, a map and a flashlight - to sum up the knowledge they possess in determining wages in a High Tech Industry can usually be found at the bottom of a typical birdcage. Competition sets the wage - that's the way it's supposed to work. When you have a group of clowns arbitrarily setting wages, nothing good will come from it. If Apple is no-competitive in wages and benefits, people will leave Apple and go to Samsung, IBM, Intel, Freescale, Texas Instruments, Schlumberger or a host of other competitors in the immediate area. Apple, and just about anyone else, knows the salary range for a given job far better than some idiot who got into politics because he was too inept to compete in the free market system. Let the free market system work, it's worked well for centuries; it only gets screwed up with know-nothing politicians start screwing with it.
I submit that this is NOT the job of the Austin City Counsil, this is usually nicely managed by something we like to call the "Free Market" system. I submit that the city councilmen can barely find their backsides with both hands, a map and a flashlight - to sum up the knowledge they possess in determining wages in a High Tech Industry can usually be found at the bottom of a typical birdcage.
Competition sets the wage - that's the way it's supposed to work. When you have a group of clowns arbitrarily setting wages, nothing good will come from it. If Apple is no-competitive in wages and benefits, people will leave Apple and go to Samsung, IBM, Intel, Freescale, Texas Instruments, Schlumberger or a host of other competitors in the immediate area.
Apple, and just about anyone else, knows the salary range for a given job far better than some idiot who got into politics because he was too inept to compete in the free market system. Let the free market system work, it's worked well for centuries; it only gets screwed up with know-nothing politicians start screwing with it.
Well said.
-kpluck
It's good that they added the salary requirements. Texas, as a whole, is an employers paradise. Nice to see someone coming down on the side of employees for once.
What is good for the company is usually pretty good for employees (as a whole), too. When a company is doing well, they hire people. Successful companies want to hire good people, so they also pay well. Companies that are not doing well will start cutting costs, often meaning downsizing or salary cuts. I'd rather be looking for work in a low-unemployment, lower-salary state like Texas than a high-unemployment, high-salary state like NY any day.