Detroit Factory Receives $175 Million Tax Break; Only Hires 15 People

n an attempt to get more people hired in Detroit, the city decided to award a $175 million tax break to Marathon Petroleum as it underwent a “massive expansion project.” This should have been enough to get a significant number of people hired, but today the City Council blasted the refinery for using all that money to hire just 15 Detroit residents.

(We’re pretty sure that each resident did not receive a $11.6 million salary, or anything close to that amount.)

According to the Detroit Free Press, Marathon Petroleum has 514 employees, hiring an additional 194 people ever since the $2.2 billion expansion began in 2007. Out of those employees, however, only 30 of them are from Detroit, and 15 of those employees were hired in the expansion, which the City Council find ludicrous. (The city is experiencing double-digit unemployment, after all.)

The refinery defended itself by claiming they couldn’t find any qualified employees in the entire city of Detroit, even though they’re committed to hiring Detroiters. (They even funded an engineering scholarship in order to train potential workers!) “We would like nothing better than to have a higher percentage of Detroit residents in our workforce,” refinery general manager Tracy Case reiterated to a council meeting last month, “but there are certain difficulties and challenges and obligations we have to our company to find the best people to work for us.”

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Full article here: http://www.mediaite.com/print/detroit-factory-receives-175-million-tax-break-only-hires-15-people/