THIS WEEK, in an effort to reduce costs and fatten up the bottom line, Black & Decker announced that it was shifting jobs from the Eastern Shore to Mexico and other places where labor is even cheaper than the $7.50 an hour it was paying some workers in Talbot County.

Call me crazy, but I was just wondering if they could find a CEO in Mexico willing to work for less than what B&D; top boss Nolan Archibald made last year. Nollie's compensation in 2001 was $2.3 million, plus use of the company airplane and reimbursement for "financial counseling fees." I'm no headhunter, but there's got to be a guy in a suit in Guadalajara who would play CEO for, say, $10 an hour plus an annual birthday trip in a helicopter. You know what I'm saying?

A refresher course

Please note Black & Decker's decision to close its power-tool plant on the Eastern Shore and take 1,300 jobs out of Maryland the next time some economic-development guy suggests that we give tax breaks to keep big corporations from pulling up stakes.

It's worth remembering that, just last year, the state Department of Business and Economic Development helped push through the General Assembly a corporate income tax break for B&D; and other Maryland manufacturers - with the argument that it would not only keep these corporations home but motivate them to expand their operations here.

We went over this once, but I offer a refresher because politicians are always trying to appease big, profitable corporations by providing "incentives." In the case of Black & Decker, taxpayer subsidy doesn't appear to have paid off, and the company's announcement of the Easton plant closing provides another "teachable moment."

During the 2001 session of the state legislature, the Glendening administration, House Speaker Cas Taylor and a generous General Assembly obliged Black & Decker, Northrop Grumman, McCormick & Co. and many other companies by changing the way the state calculates manufacturers' taxable income.

For years, Maryland based the calculations on three factors - a company's in-state sales, its payroll and its property.

"The current law is a disincentive to locate or expand here," Gene L. Burner, in his role as lobbyist for Maryland manufacturers, told legislators. "This bill is a fairly clear incentive to locate or expand. I see it as an economic development bill."

So did the Department of Business and Economic Development. It supported a change that made sales the single factor in the tax formula. That meant a company's income taxes would be based solely on its sales that occur in Maryland - in the case of B&D;, how many power tools it sold between Oakland and Ocean City. The state comptroller's office predicted this change would constitute a "substantial tax break." The General Assembly went for it.

A lot of good it did.

No one need be surprised that the "incentive" offered to Maryland manufacturers didn't work in the B&D; case, and probably won't work in others. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington reports that Massachusetts went to the "single sales factor" formula at the urging of Raytheon Corp. in 1995, and since then Raytheon has reduced its Massachusetts work force by at least 3,000 and the Bay State has lost 15,200 manufacturing jobs overall.

Pay and perspective

From The New York Times Magazine: "Over the past 30 years most people have seen only modest salary increases: the average annual salary in America, expressed in 1998 dollars (that is, adjusted for inflation), rose from $32,522 in 1970 to $35,864 in 1999. That's about a 10 percent increase over 29 years - progress, but not much. Over the same period, however, according to Fortune magazine, the average real annual compensation of the top 100 CEOs went from $1.3 million - 39 times the pay of an average worker - to $37.5 million, more than 1,000 times the pay of ordinary workers."

All things considered, I guess Nollie Archibald is underpaid.

Hard work forgotten

A reader close to the Black & Decker scene, and who asked that his name not be published, writes: "The Easton plant, since it opened in 1974, has always been one of most productive and efficient in the company. They carried B&D; through the late '80s and led the rebuilding of the company to what it is today. What a crime it is to see this plant close [and] people losing their jobs just for the sole purpose of driving the stock price a little higher."

Big and getting bigger

Yeah, but it's not all peaches and cream for the big-money class. Workers continue to buzz around that ever-expanding mansion at Lake and Roland avenues on the north side of the city. It's an amazing work in progress - two massive wings attached to what was already a massive house, on about 5 acres of prime real estate near a golf course. The project has been under way since spring 2001, with what appear to have been numerous stops and starts. One feels sorry for the new owners waiting to move in. They're probably living under a bridge somewhere.