Local politics, the county, and the world, as viewed by Tammy Maygra
Tammy's views are her own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Bill Eagle, his pastor, Tammy's neighbors, Earl Fisher, Betsy Johnson, Joe Corsiglia, President Obama, Tony Hyde, Pat Robertson, Debi Corsiglia's dog, or Claudia Eagle's Cats. This Tammy's Take (with the exception of this disclaimer) is not paid for or written by, or reviewed by anyone but Tammy and she refuses to be bullied by anyone.

Here we go again. Columbia County and the Port of St. Helens are courting a company to site at Port Westward called Northwest Innovation Works- a Chinese company. NW Innovation Works includes "key international partners" including the China Academy of Sciences and British Petroleum. The group says it has investments from Dalian, an industrial park and city in Northeast China, and H&Q AP, a Silicon Valley investment firm. H&Q AP manages a portion of Boeing Co.'s retirement fund. This facility will be huge using 80-90 acres of land for its operation.

The company spokesperson when asked said they would not go after any tax abatements. They would pay 50-60 thousand a year plus benefits. They would hire nearly all local people-120 workers. They would be built union and their workers would be union as well.
Unfortunately those answers were only true for about 7-10 days.  Now they are going after huge tax abatements under SIP. They will have all the other usual freebee's that the port and county can offer. They will now pay only 30 thousand a year. The usual standard answer to these types of labor questions, we will bring in family wage jobs which mean absolutely low wages. They probably will go union they say, but their facility workers are questionable.  And they will probably bring in most all higher paying positions. Which will average out the wage problem to make it sound good by saying we will pay 150 percent of area standard wages. Instead of paying a good family wage that will raise a family.

I ask the company spokesperson since they will be getting all these tax give a ways if they would create an apprentice program to train all local people for all jobs so they could hire all local people and that question was pretty much dismissed while he looked at the CEO- with the answer we are not looking at that at this time. They have permitting process to go through and do not plan to be up and going until about 2018 I said this gives you 3-4 years of training time. And stressed that since you are getting all these taxpayer subsidized tax abatements this would be away to give back to the people and be a real part of the community.

Thus company is so new that it just got backers about a month ago. A spokesperson that is peddling the company but knows little of the facility he is promoting.  That does not sound too good to me. I think methanol is better than coal even though it is very volatile. I am going to wait a while before I give you my opinion on this company. Only time will tell if they are legitimate or not.