Guest Opinion: Carrier/United Technologies to Move Jobs to Mexico

— by Michael Riordan in the New York Times —

The heating and air-conditioning equipment maker Carrier Corporation recently announced plans to transfer its Indianapolis plant’s manufacturing operations and about 1,400 jobs to Monterrey, Mexico. “It became clear that the best way to stay competitive and protect the business for long term” was to move production, an executive told employees, who were volubly and understandably upset by the looming loss of good, family-sustaining jobs.

As a former employee and current stockholder of Carrier’s parent company, United Technologies, I was deeply dismayed to watch this announcement on a video made by a plant employee.

Before that video, I had long regarded United Technologies as a company that cared about its employees’ welfare. During the 1960s, my mother was a stenotypist at its Hamilton Standard division, which sponsored scholarships that allowed my brother and me to attend M.I.T. and graduate with degrees that opened doors to high-tech employment. Summer jobs that accompanied those scholarships bolstered our practical understanding of science and engineering, and our appreciation of the company and its culture.

To read the full article, go to https://nyti.ms/1SrZUsE

(Michael Riordan, an Orcas Island physicist and historian, is a co-author of “Tunnel Visions: The Rise and Fall of the Superconducting Super Collider.”)