Does anybody remember DXC?

I wonder if anyone understands that DXC was never going to hit its stated hiring targets.  I wonder if they understand that even with when we consider the clawbacks described here that the city and the state are still spending millions of dollars to subsidize this company. 

That explanation didn't stop Mayor LaToya Cantrell's administration from cutting DXC's first-year incentives payout by 45%, the amount its payroll fell short. That's in line with rules meant to ensure an economic return on the $6.5 million the city invested in the deal.

Similarly, the state, which was due to reimburse more than $3 million of DXC's first-year expenses, is likely to withhold about $235,000 of that amount, according to records at Louisiana Economic Development. 

The low payroll was discussed at a meeting of the city's Industrial Development Board last week. The public board must pay a portion of the money New Orleans has committed to DXC over the next decade. It will also cut its first-year share by 45%.

I wonder if anyone understands this entire deal happened in the first place because it serves DXC's global cost cutting strategy. DXC is still getting everything it wanted.  It wanted to lay off workers worldwide and move the remaining bits of its hacked up operations to "lower cost labor markets." That was where we came in.  We were the lower cost labor market. Well, that and we were the suckers who agreed to just subsidize their payroll costs regardless. It's fine with DXC if it doesn't pull down the full subsidy because it doesn't really need to hire 2000 people.

But to fake a little bit of good faith, they did manage to hit a first year target of 300.  You'll never guess how they did that.

“This newly formed IT services company will create thousands of job opportunities for New Orleanians, adding to our rapidly growing digital economy,” then-Mayor Mitch Landrieu said in 2017, when the deal was announced.

But over the next two years, they filed more than 150 documents asking for federal approval to hire workers from overseas.

According to a Lens review of data from the U.S. Department of Labor, DXC has filed 152 applications for H-1B visas for foreign workers in New Orleans in the last fiscal year. Some of the applications were for up to 24 employees, but it’s not clear how many DXC is actually trying to hire.

DXC spokesman Richard Adamonis did not respond to The Lens’ questions about how many foreign workers DXC is planning to hire, or how many of the 300 hired this year were on H-1B visas. Most of the applications had starting dates in the fall of 2019. He instead provided a brief written statement.

“Our agreements with the State and City establish specific goals for job creation within the Greater New Orleans region, without regard to employee origin,” Adamonis’ statement said in part. “Many of these new hires join DXC through our local educational partners.”

Ha ha joke's on us, I guess. Failed to read the fine print. Maybe that's what the local educational partners will teach the future hires.. if there are any.  Anyway, wow, what a totally trustworthy partner Mitch and John Bel and LaToya have chosen for us.

At least LaToya says she had a hand in it.  Here she is during the final 2017 mayoral debate saying she played a role in landing the DXC deal as a city councilmember. She also goes on to talk about how she wants to "depoliticize" the process by which these corporate giveaways are handed out. This is the same line taken by LABI and Republican agitators in Baton Rouge who spent the 2019 election complaining that John Bel's changes to the Industrial Tax Exemption process allow for too much democracy. It's possible the current mayor is even more right wing than either the governor or her predecessor.

Meanwhile, we read at the bottom of this story that DXC fired its CEO in September. It's hard to read between the lines here but it sounds like the shareholders are convinced his cost-cutting strategy that brought the company here was good for them in the long run. Even if it was "brutal," it was also "effective."

Lawrie had led the legacy Computer Sciences Corp. through a turbulent period for the IT services industry, which had to deal with low-cost competition from India and elsewhere.

But DXC shares have since recovered to nearly $38 as analysts began to recognize the change was necessary.

“Lawrie’s tenure is commonly acknowledged to have been brutal in style (even if) it was effective,” according to Rachael Stormonth, an analyst at Nelson Hall, a consultancy. Salvino, on the other hand, immediately emphasized that he would seek to rebuild morale, and he is thought to have a good grasp of the "solutions" approach needed in the industry now, Stormonth said.

And now the job is to "rebuild morale."  Probably should start in the PR department.