Right wing nut jobs are out with more lies about Sensata Technologies today, the Bain company that's outsourcing 170 good jobs from Freeport, Ill. to China.
First they claimed that President Obama was personally invested in Sensata, just because his pension from his years in the IL State Senate is invested. Obama's portion of that investment is $11, which he won't see for another 11 years as Laura Clawson has pointed out.
Today they claim that Sensata has created lots of jobs, way more than the 170 they are outsourcing from Illinois to China.
Yes, Sensata has created thousands of jobs. The problem is, they are all overseas.
From Sensata's 10K filings:
Sensata jobs worldwide
Year Total Jobs US share US calc 10-K page
2006 6,400 20% 1280 12
2007 9,324 17% 1585 12
2008 9,278 12% 1113 15
2009 9,500 10% 950 16
2010 10,500 9% 945 18
2011 11,400 9% 1026 15
2012* 12,000 7% 836
Sensata has never explicitly counted its US workers, but in its annual 10-K filings, it does list employees worldwide, as well as a percentage for share who work in the US. That percentage has gone down over time--even with new acquisitions such as the Freeport plant--from 20% in 2006 to 9% in 2011, and with layoffs at Freeport and Cambridge this year, it could drop to 7% or lower in 2012.
As can be seen, their US workforce actually peaked in 2007 at 1585, as Sensata added new divisions. Since then, the pattern has been trending down in the US, so that by 2011, the global workforce had risen by 2,000 (+22%), but the US jobs had fallen by 550 (-35%).
If the 2012 extrapolations are correct, US jobs will have gone down by almost half (47%), while worldwide jobs go up almost 29%.
I'm not using the 2006 numbers as a baseline, since Sensata was still being put together. But even if they were used, the point remains similar: US jobs go down, and new work (if not existing jobs) gets done overseas.
So yeah, Bain Capital's Sensata Technologies is creating jobs, in China. The Chinese government built them a new plant in Baoying. That's where the Freeport workers' jobs are going.
According to the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights, "there are an estimated 500 to 1,000 workers at the Sensata Baoying plant, and hiring is limited to local people.
This Sensata story is just another example of Bain Capital outsourcing good jobs to China, and it's starting to hurt Mitt Romney. Romney owns more than $50 million in Bain Capital stock, including $8 million in Fund 8, which controls Sensata Technologies.
Check out the Sensata workers tonight as The Ed Show on MSNBC will be airing live from the "Bainport" tent city across from the plant.