GE Power & Water to move jobs to Canada from Wisconsin

General Electric announced they would move 1,000 jobs to the United Kingdom due to a lack of Export-Import bank funds, but a GE spokesman later said the deal would have gone through regardless of Ex-Im’s operation, Reuters reported.

“We know these announcements will have regrettable impact not only on our employees but on the hundreds of USA suppliers we work with that can not move their facilities, but we can not walk away from our customers”, GE Vice Chairman John Rice said in a statement.

Jordan and other conservatives rallied earlier this year to prevent the House from voting on renewing the bank, but backers – including Rep. Pat Tiberi, a suburban Columbus Republican who is a close ally to Boehner – say a floor vote will take place later this fall.

The company plans to build a new $265 million “brilliant factory” to manufacture engines in Canada, which will have the added ability to manufacture diesel engine components for GE Transportation. The facility, expected for completion in 20 months, will be a flexible production factory, meaning it can expand to support the manufacturing requirements for other GE businesses.

GE countered that the U.S.is the only country now without an export credit agency and that it needs the Ex-Im Bank to compete on a level playing field.

In Canada, GE will have access to a similar export credit agency, Export Development Canada, which will allow it to bid on about $11 billion of projects now in the pipeline that require export financing. But few projects involving these engines now use EXIM financing, so the move is more aimed at finding government export credit for other businesses, the GE spokeswoman said. The authorization for the USA export credit agency the Export-Import Bank, or Ex-Im lapsed on July 1.

“We continue to urge Congress to reauthorize the Ex-Im Bank for all American companies. In a slow growth and volatile world, we must go where the markets are and compete in over 170 countries”, Rice said. Most of the 350 Waukesha manufacturing employees are represented by the global Association of Machinists. “Killing the bank means thousands of U.S.jobs will be needlessly sacrificed for an extreme political agenda”.

Union spokesperson Frank Larkin said the U.S. Export-Import Bank “was one of those rare government programs that worked as intended; it protected American jobs and returned a profit to the U.S. Treasury”.

GE said it has notified suppliers about its plans for the Waukesha plant.