Gabbo is coming

What is it? Who is it? What does it want from us? Will it please just tell us what to do?

Gov. John Bel Edwards is set to make a major economic development announcement Monday (Nov. 13) afternoon, according to a press release, which called the upcoming news "one of the most significant economic development announcements in Louisiana history."

The press release was light on details, noting only the time and location of the announcement: 2 p.m. outside the Mercedes-Benz Superdome.

No, I don't think it's Amazon. That is, unless it's one of Amazon's hellish, labor exploitative distribution centers. But even that isn't likely.  Probably something oil and gas related. Either that or  a monorail. There's always room for monorails.

Update: Show them what they've won!

Daily Report has confirmed that the major economic development announcement Gov. John Bel Edwards will make in New Orleans this afternoon involves Virginia-based DXC Technology, which will set up operations in the Crescent City and eventually create 2,000 permanent high tech jobs.

2,000 jobs is nice. Probably not much immediate help for local New Orleanians in that number. Some. If you happen to be in the "high tech" field. Are you?  Oh well. It's okay, they'll bring in some people. 

See, DXC's strategy here is all about finding "low cost" labor in "lower-cost facilities."

But in an earnings call to investors on Nov. 7, DXC chairman president and CEO John Michael Lawrie suggested the company would be opening new facilities in U.S markets where labor costs are lower.

Lawrie told investors the company was “rethinking how you bring people in … and it’s about a whole different approach to where we set up our locations. I’ve said before we are looking at creating some lower-cost facilities in the United States and moving some of our workload there.”

What this means is they're looking to locate in places where the cost of living compares favorably with national tech hubs such that workers will take less in wages to relocate and still come out ahead. You might need to get out of their way, though.  In any case, congratulations on being fodder for the  big workforce and real estate cost reduction efficiency finding synergy plan.

On a conference call, DXC executives said cost-cutting efforts are proceeding according to plan, including workforce reductions, reducing real estate and facility expenses, and implementing "supply chain efficiencies and consolidations."

"We continue to achieve key merger integration milestones," president and CEO Mike Lawrie said. "We're executing our synergy plan, and we're on track to meet our targets of $1 billion of year-one cost savings, as well as a billion and a half [dollars] of run-rate cost savings exiting the year."

Meanwhile, we still don't know how much of your ever-increasing sales taxes will go to the "incentive" package that subsidizes all of this. Guess that's what the big press conference is all about.

By the way, the headline writers are already took the bait provided by the Governor's PR department last night calling this "one of the most significant economic development announcements in Louisiana history."  This clearly does not come close to meeting that expectation.  Today we're seeing the qualifying correction.  I wonder if anyone will notice.

The business expansion represents "the most permanent jobs for a single LED (Louisiana Economic Development) project in state history," said the source, who was not authorized to speak on the record.

 Maybe this is specifically LED's biggest whale. That's not saying a whole lot though.