THE INDUSTRIAL RECRUITMENT PERSPECTIVE

What is it that makes communities prosper? Industrial recruitment. The community that attracts Big Name businesses or branch plants to its vicinity can expect to receive a shower of benefits. There will be new jobs, and with those jobs will come greater local purchasing power and a bigger tax base. The industry’s demand for goods and services will prompt local businesses to start or grow. All this new money will help the community pay for roads, water and sewer systems, schools, and parks.

This is a perspective that is common among planners at all levels of government – local, regional, territorial, provincial, and federal. Like the Big Business Perspective, it assumes that growth is the highest goal and that private corporations are the only way to achieve it. What’s different about the Industrial Recruitment Perspective is the role it assigns to government in economic growth. The role of government at all levels is to please industry and compete for it with a variety of incentives.

This competition can cost provincial, territorial, regional and local governments a lot of time and money.

To bring about large projects, like mines, governments often spend a lot on infrastructureInfrastructure: the basic facilities, equipment, roads, transmission lines, sewage, water, and other installations needed to support the functioning of a mine. and other supports to make a region more “development friendly.” With smaller industries, communities will try to outdo each other with streets, lighting, tax breaks, and ready made industrial sites.

The trouble is, when one community or region wins the competition, the others lose. Yet even the winner may find that the costs outweigh the benefits that the new industry brings. Large businesses which have been lured to an area often purchase their goods and services from the outside. Consequently many of the benefits which were supposed to shower down locally end up elsewhere.

Moreover, it is not uncommon for companies to threaten that they will move if governments are not “friendlier.” This is especially the case with a global industry such as mining. Companies with mineralMineral: A naturally-occurring, homogeneous substance that has a definite chemical composition and (usually) a crystalline structure. rights in a number of places around the world are able to move their operations to the ones with lower taxes and less environmental regulation.

When all is said and done, the Industrial Recruitment Perspective encourages communities to behave like they are the servants of industry, not its partners.