People in Fairfield have some pretty strong reactions to GE deciding to move its corporate headquarters to Boston, beginning this summer.
All of the roughly 800 jobs at the company’s Fairfield campus will leave town by the time the company completes is move, which is expected to begin this summer and be done by 2018.
A GE spokesperson said on Thursday that about 200 of the Fairfield jobs will relocate to Boston and some current Fairfield employees could be relocated to existing facilities in Norwalk.
At Andros Diner and Restaurant, there is concern that the departure of that many families from the community could have a trickledown effect on local businesses.
“In the long term, I think it’s going to hurt. It’s sad. It’s a sad thing,” Leo Pertesis, owner of the restaurant, said. “Those people are not going to be in the area. They’re not going to have, they won’t have the need, to go out and eat. They’re going to have to move out or follow GE.”
Officials from GE said they wanted to relocate to a city that offered a better business environment than Connecticut.
Fairfield residents who are upset about the news said that comes as no surprise to them and they think lawmakers need to consider making a change to the state’s tax system.
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“I think taxes are something that the state really needs to look at and see how that impacts its residents because if businesses are leaving, there’s a lot of things that are connected,” Caitlin Pereira, of Fairfield, said.
“We’re not friendly for people to stay here or newcomers to bring their headquarters or industry here. We’re dead in the water,” Arthur Caraballo, of Bridgeport, said.
The specifics on which GE employees will move where have not yet been made public.
