Jeffrey Immelt doesn’t want money and power. As Chairman and CEO of General Electric, he has them. What he wants is a little appreciation. Not much, just enough to keep him going. I don’t think that’s too much to ask. Considering what’s he’s done for our country, a little thanks is in order. Very little.
As our country faces an unemployment crisis deeper and longer than any since the Great Depression, Mr. Immelt oversees a company with 300,000 employees, more than half of them overseas. What’s more, G.E. does sixty per cent of their business abroad. One source of those profits is selling advanced technology to foreign companies that compete with American ones. At home, G.E. can be counted on to pay little or nothing in taxes.
That may be a little harsh. I’m sure the chairman can put his company in a better light. As he told Lesley Stahl on Sixty Minutes (10/9/11), “It’s the world we live in. This where we have to be … the customers are here. And, that’s just the way it is. I’m never going to apologize for that, ever, ever.”
Not that Mr. Immelt is completely without a conscience. He isn’t. Not completely. “I wish all our customers were in Chicago . . . but this is where the growth is.” (Take that, Sears, McDonald’s and Kraft.) Nor is G.E. neglecting the U.S. They’ve just built a new factory in Batesville, Mississippi. A highly automated, new factory. “You’re going to have fewer people that do any task,” says the CEO, “In the end, it makes the system more productive.” They’re also hiring again at G.E.’s Appliance Park in Louisville, KY, but only because of rising labor costs in China and Mexico. It doesn’t take much to undercut them, either. Lesley Stahl says, “A lot of the jobs we saw were $13/hr jobs. That’s really not the ticket, is it, to a really vibrant middle class?” “You’ve gotta start somewhere,” is the reply.
As for that secret technology, it’s no secret at all. Ms. Stahl mentions, “ . . . recent joint venture with China, where a new G.E. computer system will go into a Chinese airliner that could eventually compete with Boeing.” Mr. Immelt’s answer is evasive, so Ms. Stahl counters with, “Let me be more specific, are we in any way giving the Chinese a technology that they didn’t have before? That depletes our competitive edge in the future?” “We give nothing,” sputters the CEO, “We own it” and “We see them as a big market.”
Okay, international business is extremely complicated, but everyone pays taxes. It’s the one national obligation that no one can avoid – no one except G.E. Neither Stahl nor Immelt will put a number on the amount that G.E. pays in taxes. She says, “It’s not quite zero, but it’s pretty low.” He prefers to say, “ . . . we’ve had an extraordinary couple of years.”
Is it possible that Jeffrey Immelt is unaware of the unemployment crisis in this country? No, for two reasons. One is that Lesley Stahl puts the question to him directly. “Shouldn’t American corporations – don’t they have some kind of civic responsibility to create jobs? No?” “My name is not above the door. I work for investors.” Two, he’s just been appointed to head a Presidential commission on job creation in the U.S. (Why Pres. Obama chose him for this particular post is, frankly, obscure. At best, it muddies the distinction between being President of all the people and being afraid of the powerful ones.)
That’s all fine and official and looks good on his resume, but where’s the love? Jeffrey Immelt, the person, not the CEO, pleads his case with Lesley Stahl: “I want you to root for me . . . Everybody in Germany roots for Siemens. Everybody in Japan roots for Toshiba. I want you to say, ‘Win, G.E.’ I think this notion that it’s the population of the U.S. against the big companies is just wrong . . .When I walk through a factory with you or anybody . . . our employees basically like us. They root for us, they want us to win. I don’t know why you don’t.”
What a guy. Makes you proud to be a G.E. stockholder.
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