When large companies support strict government regulation of all or part of their business it’s usually for competitive reasons — and that competitive reason is generally squeezing out smaller companies. That’s why Philip Morris has supported so much of the insolent and oppressive tobacco regulation of recent years.
Here, however, is a different variant on the same theme, explained by the Washington Examiner’s Timothy Carney:
“Government did us in,” says Dwayne Madigan, whose job will terminate when General Electric closes its factory next July.
Madigan makes a product that will soon be illegal to sell in the U.S. – a regular incandescent bulb. Two years ago, his employer, GE, lobbied in favor of the law that will outlaw the bulbs.
Madigan’s colleagues, waiting for their evening shift to begin, all know that GE is replacing the incandescents for now with compact fluorescents bulbs, which GE manufactures in China. Last month, GE announced it will close the Winchester Bulb Plant 80 miles west of D.C. As a result, 200 men and women will lose their jobs. GE is also shuttering incandescent factories in Ohio and Kentucky, axing another 200 jobs….
These men, waiting in the shade in front of the employees’ entrance to the plant on a hot afternoon, all know another pertinent fact about the light-bulb law that is killing their jobs: GE lobbied in favor of it.
Why did GE, founded by Thomas Edison, lobby to kill the incandescent light bulb?
The company said in 2007 it wanted to make sure it was working under a single federal efficiency standard, rather than a patchwork of state regulations. GE also touts its compact fluorescents as one of the green products in its “eco-magination” initiative.
The workers don’t buy the green arguments, pointing to the mercury gas that’s in the fluorescents…
So, GE gets environmentalist brownie points for selling “clean” light bulbs, and they also get to charge more for their bulbs. But there’s another advantage—they save on labor with fluorescents, because they make the fluorescents in China.
Not only are wages lower there, but so are the regulatory burdens, both environmental and labor. The Times of London recently reported, “Large numbers of Chinese workers have been poisoned by mercury, which forms part of the compact fluorescent lightbulbs.”