Landing NCR is welcome news
With unemployment here higher than the national average, we certainly needed the news that automation giant NCR is moving its Dayton, Ohio, headquarters to Duluth. That means 1,250 jobs.
NCR will also establish a manufacturing plant in Columbus that will employ an additional 870 people over the next five years, state officials said.
With $5.3 billion in revenue, NCR would rank as Georgia’s 13th largest public company. And it helps burnish the state’s image, which has lost some iconic corporate headquarters to mergers in the past few years, including BellSouth and Georgia-Pacific.
Founded as the National Cash Register Co. in 1884, two years before Coca-Cola was invented, NCR has been through several reincarnations. Today, the company is known for producing ATMs, point-of-sale scanners and other business equipment, software and services.
Late last year, NCR’s connection to metro Atlanta grew with an announcement of a 900-job expansion in Duluth and Peachtree City. NCR supplies local companies and recently announced a marketing deal with the Atlanta Spirit, owners of the Hawks and Thrashers, to help the teams communicate with fans and others.
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26 comments Add your comment
Bill Moy
June 1st, 2009
4:51 pm
GM, Delphi and DHL have put 30,000 people out of work in Dayton metro. People desperate to work at NCR. So Bill Nuti, in his ultimate wisdom, decides to move the city’s iconic company to Atlanta? What on earth for? The traffic? The high cost of housing? The shortage of water? The incredible pollen counts? The hour long commute to the airport? Somebody is getting paid off big time. Bill Nuti is ripping the heart out Dayton and squishing it between his toes. Kharma dude. Watch your kharma. Sorry Atlanta, I don’t feel your joy
NORRIS
June 1st, 2009
9:31 pm
They wont be providing jobs. The jobs are being filled now. I have a friend who was promoted and will be teaching there at the new office on peachtree street. so, if anything they are bringing more people to the already congested area. NO NEW JOBS. sorry……….
David
June 1st, 2009
9:37 pm
New office on Peachtree? The headquarters is supposedly in Duluth…
NCR
June 1st, 2009
9:40 pm
Peachtree City is not Atlanta and is not on Peachtree Street. Peachtree City is surrounded by affordable housing and is about 15 minutes from the airport, not an hour, and the area has enough going on where you don’t have to go to Atlanta. Peachtree City living is as laid back as it comes, you can get from point A to point B on a golf cart. Get your facts straight since you obviously don’t know what your talking about.
RGB
June 1st, 2009
9:41 pm
Let’s see…if a company is headquartered in Dayton and it brings those jobs to Atlanta (and doesn’t create a single new job at the company), then there will be new jobs in the metro area even if no current residents are hired. These people will buy homes, restaurant meals, automobiles, gasoline, pay taxes, etc. At the margin, moving 1,300 jobs to Atlanta will cause some others to be created among other area companies.
But I’m not a statist so you libs keep thinking this is a bad thing.
NCR
June 1st, 2009
9:42 pm
There are two locations in GA, one in Duluth, one in PTC. The PTC is where the new Center of Excellence is being constructed which will provide quality training for employees. Facility has been under construction for all of 2009.
Mike D
June 1st, 2009
9:52 pm
It would be great for Atlanta, but Ohio just keeps getting more and more hammered with bad news.
vuduchld
June 1st, 2009
9:58 pm
Why is the world would any company move to a state where it’s leaders are pushing for succession!? Do yourselves a favor folks, stay in Ohio!!!
Keith
June 1st, 2009
11:41 pm
I hope you know that if NCR moves, you will be helping to put a lot of people in Ohio out of work. So thanks from us here in Dayton. I hope you can still sleep at night.
J
June 2nd, 2009
12:42 am
I was there in Duluth when NCR was kind enough to sell the building, lease back half of it and actually had the contractors cut our cubicle desks in half. I was also there when my team was me and a dozen people offshore and I was given new and near impossible tasks each day. In spite of all of that and months of excessive overtime to attempt those unrealistic deadlines, I was given a raise that was less than half inflation.
I greatly enjoyed my time with the wonderful people I worked with there and the opportunity they gave me to work w/ massive Fortune100 companies but the cost cutting to the bone and ridiculously bad raises didn’t leave me much option. I left for a position that paid me over 50% more and never looked back.
You may think this is some great boon for GA but NCR likely had far more than 2,000 jobs coming in Georgia just 10-15 years ago before they dumped all their manufacturing on Solectron. When I got there half the cubicles were empty and so much of the company’s talent had already walked out the door. AT&T’s disastrous acquisition and subsequent spin-off nearly destroyed the company from nearly 60,000 employees to under 30,000 by 2000. It’s now 20,000 and revenues are still below what they were in 1990. The company is posed to fall off the Fortune 500 despite being there since its inception in 1955.
The company is storied but its greatest stories are of its failures, missteps, and its near misses with greatness. The single greatest claim to fame is they fired the guy that created IBM. It may be some jobs for Duluth but I am also saddened for the people in Dayton b/c NCR has 100+ years in Dayton only to be dumped for some ridiculous tax credits that Purdue gave them. I can just see Nuti telling facilities to dig up the sawed off cubicle sections to fill up the walled off section of the building.
Glad to see Tech coming to the ATL
June 2nd, 2009
1:08 am
Sonny, get off your a$$ and do what ever you have to do to bring more tech to the area. See Dallas for an example. I don’t know what Dallas does, but you can’t swing a cat without hitting a high paying tech company.
Bone
June 2nd, 2009
7:58 am
To the Bill’s, Norris’, vuduchld’s, Keith’s and J’s of the world (in Ohio), only look at yourselves for this NCR move. You and your representatives have make Ohio the 4th highest taxed state in the union. No wonder companies want to move. The place is dark and a mess already…then you tax people and companies to death.
Business is business, and apparently you all (ya’ll in our language) don’t get it. So keep taxing yourselves for a better job, believe the politicans about how this will make things better, and don’t move South. Most of you that moved already has made the mess we have today. Have fun up there!!
Glenn
June 2nd, 2009
8:49 am
I understand the pain and anger of the people in Ohio as we have all felt the same in Georgia as our HQ’s have moved to other areas of the Country recently. Let’s cut them some slack and be appreciative that a Fortune 500 Company sees fit to move to our area and wish the fine friends in Dayton the very best.
Regarding how we convinced NCR to move their HQ and additional facilities to GA, all I would suggest is that our tax dollars are being spent on other things already; why not use some of them to help encourage NCR to relocate here, hire our citizens, pay taxes, etc, so it can generate revenues for the State and eventually pay us back rather than continue to just have money be paid out with nothing in return?
Breathe
June 2nd, 2009
9:02 am
About the theory of no new net jobs being created… I doubt ALL 1,300 employees will move to Metro Atlanta. There will be openings.
Bubba
June 2nd, 2009
9:08 am
Also, 800 or so jobs coming to Columbus where NCR will open a new manufacturing facility. Good news for Georgia thanks to its pro-business leaders.
ESA
June 2nd, 2009
9:25 am
Ohio should wake up and smell the unfriendly business climate. The reason companies continue to move South is because we have lower taxes and aren’t unionized.
While this is positive for the Atlanta area, there is actually a downside. Georgia’s “leadership” will see this relocation as validation of their bone-headed lack of planning. The long term result will be that Atlanta falls farther behind Texas cities which are building roads, public transportation, and planned for water decades ago.
J
June 2nd, 2009
9:34 am
Bone,
I am in Atlanta…I worked for NCR in Duluth a few years back. If Dayton offered NCR millions to stay, how much did GA offer? There is no free lunch here…GA must have offered enough tax savings to push this through the board of directors as well as perceived future cost savings for NCR to have pursued anything like this. If Dayton was dropping 10 figures, that means GA offered that and more. NCR even owns the country club in Dayton (See NCR Country Club) so it obviously took a lot for the company to move. The Satellite Blvd facility used to be manufacturing and offices before it was converted to nearly 200,000 sqft of offices by consolidating several offices and layoffs. When I was there the cubicles were 7′x10′ and half were empty from the rounds of layoffs. The company as a cost saving move sold the building, leased back half, and proceeded to cut our cubes in half to 7′x5′ which made them taller than they were wide and pretty much a phone booth. The company obviously doesn’t have tremendous foresight b/c they owned the real estate on their planned Duluth HQ until 2006 and to have to come back, knock down all the walls they built to lease back the rest of the building 3 yrs later shows a very short planning horizon.
NCR likely had 4-5,000 jobs in the Atlanta metro in the 90’s. It long ago offshored those jobs and yes they are bringing some jobs to GA but I honestly doubt they are making as much of an impact as Purdue or whoever negotiated the tax breaks for them to show up. The avg salary is $70k…that’s terrible for a tech company given you have senior execs making a few million a year counting toward that salary. GT grads make more than that by their 3rd or 4th year out usually. I realize that Georgia is happy to get any jobs it can but I’d much rather see them pulling companies like Google, Microsoft, et al rather than a relatively has been company whose hometown history is so closely intertwined with it. NCR has sold off both its high tech/growth Teradata product, low tech paper products, tech manufacturing, and all that’s left is a software product company that still thinks its in the business of moving boxes(ATM’s, POS, Kiosks) by giving its software away.
GA isn’t gaining a high tech future here. The money could have been far better spent trying to get a true tech company to build an R&D center in Atlanta near GT. NCR isn’t a growth company and getting 1,300 jobs means they probably shed another 1,000 in the process.
Terri
June 2nd, 2009
9:46 am
What a joke, NCR is on the way out. Dayton citzen’s built that company and to think that NCR will be good to Georgia think again. Dayton has to get rid of Mayor Franklin friend McLin who’s been inviting her to Dayton to speak all the time while all along she was here courting business’s to move to Georgia. It makes me sick that no company in this country has any loyalty to the community that made them who they are. If it’s all about the profits then God help us all.
JW
June 2nd, 2009
10:16 am
Why would any company want to move to the Atlanta area? They most relish high crime, Mexican drug cartels, choking air pollution, unbearable traffic, ignorant politicians, drought, miserable summer heat and a hearty supply of Georgia rednecks.
RGB
June 2nd, 2009
10:40 am
Keith,
We are sleeping well, thank you.
Ohio is a high tax state and has been losing jobs for years. Haven’t you noticed?
Companies have to relocate where they can survive–whether Atlanta or overseas. If you’d like to prevent other such companies from leaving Ohio, then make your business climate more friendly. Tell Ted you want fewer services and lower taxes. Plus, Ohio is a forced unionism state while Georgia is a right-to-work state. That also says something about the business climate.
In short, at least in this instance, Ohio was not competitive with Georgia. You can get mad or you can get better.
It’s your choice.
Bone
June 2nd, 2009
10:53 am
J,
Welcome to 2009, and stop living in the past. If you own your business, and times are what they are today, you know that you can’t run things like it was in the 90’s. Things change…business structures change. In this new market, you have to make changes. I doubt that the decision was done in a matter of days or even weeks. Many changes, along with money that needs to be borrowed to make this move, were observed and compared.
Facing up to own mistakes
June 2nd, 2009
11:22 am
No one is forcing people to stay in Ohio! People have been known to move where the jobs are. In the stone ages, people moved where the animals migrated. If the people did not move where it would bring them food and they go through hard times, it is a matter of choice to me.
J
June 2nd, 2009
1:01 pm
Bone,
I was a teen in 2000. I’m talking about NCR today. I worked there in ‘05-’06 at the Duluth office and worked on one of their largest clients. I learned a lot and really enjoyed my coworkers and the sense of community that apparently they worked so hard at tearing apart. At the same time, they were a tech company that didn’t believe in tech. They threw all their resources at selling physical boxes rather than the value the software provided. Look at IBM, Oracle, Microsoft…do any of them give the software away for free to make money selling the box and a service contract? The people there had a hardened bitterness to a company that had changed direction so many times and laid off so many. It’s a shell of the company it once was and bringing it to ATL for 60M is a bit ridiculous. NCR has a long history of shortsighted decisions and this one is something that Purdue just handed them a jackpot.
I don’t own my own company…I’m happily employed at another company that pays me over 50% more than NCR did. I’m just being realistic in saying that Purdue obviously is a terrible negotiator b/c they gave away the farm just for NCR to bring a few jobs to the state. Instead of putting that 60M toward turning ATL into a true tech destination, he bought up an old, outdated company that’s beyond its glory days. What’s next? Bring the bankrupted remnants of GM down? The Westin already looks just like their HQ I guess.
Bone
June 5th, 2009
9:59 am
J,
So you are one of the people that gets his experience and, instead of investing his/her experience with the company that gave you that, you move on to the next higher paying job. Boy, there’s some loyalty for you!! What are you going to do when they cut your pay and/or don’t give you the bonus you think you deserve?
You talk about companies changing directions…seems people like you change direction and wonder why companies act as they do. Think about your own decisions and ask yourself why a company would want to keep you or someone else.
joe
June 6th, 2009
8:44 am
Bone is right on the money! Ohio has an anti-business environment that most Ohioans like to ignore. With the uncertain tax liabilities associated to Strickland’s educational reform, if passed, businesses will be even more inclined to expand or move outside of the state of Ohio. Ohio has a very high effective tax rate and does not offer the Right to Work laws that other states do. Ohio needs a consistent long term pro-business policy. Tax incentives should be policy not a last hour inducement. That is why GA has been on the mind of so many business leaders for the past 40 years!
joe
June 6th, 2009
9:01 am
Ohio suffers from problems of its’ own making. Too much protection of union labor, taxes that are too high and a state government that is bloated, full of redundancies and corruption. Until the prideful Buckeyes wake up and realize there are more important issues than a football team in Columbus, states like Georgia are going to be the benefitiary of a more Ohio based companies relocating operations and headquarters. GM-Delphi-DHL-NCR, all offered last hour tax deals by Governor Strickland. All closed up shop or moved. Who’s next? Just to be clear, I was born, raised and once again live in Ohio. Watching this has been painful. Ohio is turning into a suburb of Detroit and it aint pretty! It is unfair and unrealistic to blame GA or Sonny Perdue for Ohio’s problems.