Evidently El Paso Electric thinks the only thing they owe the people of El Paso is to sell them electricity for as much as the market will bear. They obviously don't feel any obligation to help the economy of El Paso by keeping decent paying company jobs there.
On Monday, El Paso Electric CEO Ershel Redd Jr. (pictured above) announced that the company was outsourcing its Information Technology department. They have signed a contract with Dyonyx, a Houston company, to handle all their IT work.
This move costs the El Paso area 51 decent jobs. That may not sound like a whole lot of jobs, but this is money that will no longer be being spent in the El Paso economy (and each dollar from a job normally turns over several times in the local economy).
Sadly, those may not be the last jobs outsourced by the company. Felipe Salazar of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local #960 said "employees are pretty nervous" about whether more outsourcing will occur.
Redd said, "This is something that benefits our customers. This gives us access to cutting-edge technologies and skills sets that would be cost prohibitive to build ourselves." He went on to say, "A lot of electric companies are doing this."
The fact that other electric companies are doing it doesn't make it right. The fact that someone else is doing something wrong doesn't excuse you for doing the same thing. I believe their customers would have benefited more by the company's continued investment in the local economy by keeping their jobs in El Paso.
Just like many other corporations, they don't seem to realize that they owe a social and economic debt to the city where they do business. Sending jobs to Houston does nothing to repay that debt.
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