GE, WHICH ON NOV. 9 ANNOUNCED IT WILL divide itself into three public companies—aviation, health care and energy—has seen a 75% decline in its domestic labor force since 1989, per a new report from Cornell University and the University of Massachusetts, Boston. That’s a drop from 277,000 to just 70,000 U.S. workers; noteworthy, the report says, because of the state and federal taxpayer grants and subsidies GE received while disinvesting in the U.S. economy.
CASHING IN GE has drawn more than $2.2 billion in public funds since 1992, according to data compiled by Good Jobs First, a nonprofit economic watchdog. (The company contests this figure.) GE’s reliance on subsidies is “indisputable,” says Nick Juravich, a primary author of the report and the associate director of the Labor Resource Center at…