California manufacturing giants takes jobs out of state in expansion move

One of California’s largest manufacturers is shifting dozens of jobs out of the Golden State to a new facility in neighboring Nevada.

Haas Automation, which makes large-scale machines and tools, will relocate 73 jobs to Nevada, the company said in a notification letter to California. Haas will soon have a 2.4 million-square-foot facility in Henderson, Nevada.

The facility has been in the works for six years and will contain a lobby, demo room, event center, and full production areas like the machine shop.

“Haas is taking this action to enable future growth,” the company said in its notice reported by SFGate. “We built a new, state-of-the-art 2.5 million- square-foot manufacturing facility in Henderson, Nevada, and we hope employees who move there will enjoy everything the Henderson community offers.”

Assemblers, operators and machinists on assembly lines will be moved to Nevada by the end of the year.

The company declined to comment but told SFGate “the notice does not announce any layoffs, and it applies only to certain relocating employees whose employment is expected to continue without interruption.”

The relocation comes after Haas assured to California locals in the Ventura County Star last year that it’s “still committed to Ventura County, and we will still have a good presence here” in spite of the new facility being built in Nevada.

Haas has about 1,700 employees in its headquarters at Oxnard and is among the California county’s biggest employers.

Since its founding as a small machine shop in greater Los Angeles, the company has since grown to be one of the largest machine tool builders in the world by total unit volume.

Nevada has become one of a number of states that California businesses have relocated to for more business-friendly environments.

Nevada, which does not levy a personal or corporate state income tax on individuals, previously approved incentives for Haas to bring as many as 2,500 jobs over ten years.

“I think Nevada, overall, is just so much more business-friendly than other parts of the country that we’ve looked at. It’s been an easy and wonderful process,” Peter Zierhut, Vice President, Outside Operations for Haas Automation, previously said at the Nevada facility’s ground breaking.

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