Embattled StarKist Co., the once iconic tuna concern now dabbling in salmon and chicken, is moving its headquarters from Pittsburgh’s North Shore to Reston, Va.
‘Bye. And don’t let the boat hatch hit you on the way out.
Fairfax County, Va., officials are all a ga-ga over the “catch.” It baited StarKist with, by today’s standards, a rather modest scrod of taxpayer incentives, beating out neighboring Maryland.
As one news account told it:
“StarKist, which worked with the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority (EDA) and Virginia Economic Development Partnership on the move, will be eligible for financial incentives through the Virginia Jobs Investment Program, the EDA said.
“The company can get up to $62,250, or $750 per job, for this incentive, a spokesperson said.
Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam appeared to rationalize the subsidy by noting that StarKist will “invest” $3.6 million to relocate to Reston.
But, as per usual, and no matter the amount, if hooking StarKist is another in a long line of be-alls and end-alls for any region’s economy, why did the public have to pay for the jobs?
Additionally, Virginia officials – and the plethora of alphabet soup agencies besides themselves over what they surely believe to be a coup — have been touting the relocation as the “creation of 83 new jobs.” But the truth of the matter is it’s pretty much relocating jobs from Pittsburgh to Reston.
Ah, more shuffling of the deck chairs on the Titanic that is just another government-subsidized machination all gussied up as “economic development.”
The StarKist headquarters move will come in early 2022. It will leave its Pittsburgh digs effective March 31. The company says that while “it will maintain a presence” in the Pittsburgh region, it offered no details.
Once owned by the H.J. Heinz Co., and, later, Del Monte, it now is owned by Dongwon Enterprises of South Korea.
Despite all the rah-rah-sis-boom-bah-ing accompanying this latest exercise in corporate wealthfare, there’s not one word about the elephant in net:
It was in September 2019 that a federal court ruled that StarKist had to pay a $100 million fine for its role in a conspiracy to fix the price of canned and pouched tuna.
Competitor Chicken of the Sea ratted out StarKist and another, Bumble Bee Foods.
If that’s the kind of business government officials want to recruit to their “shores” with public dollars, well, they are bankrupt in not only their economic development philosophy but also in their ethics.
It turns out, Pittsburgh’s “loss” is Reston, Va.’s loss, too.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
