Kris Turner

kris.turner@indystar.com

Two companies that plan to move 2,100 Hoosier jobs to Mexico agreed to reimburse nearly $1.6 million in incentives to local and state government, Gov. Mike Pence announced after meeting Wednesday with a top company official.

The incentives include $1.2 million in tax abatements, which will be returned to the Metropolitan Development Commission in Indianapolis, and $382,000 in training grants that will be reimbursed to the state.

The announcement came after Pence held a closed-door meeting with United Technologies Corp. President Bob McDonough, who oversees Carrier Corp. and United Technologies Electronic Controls, which are shuttering their manufacturing operations in the Hoosier state.

As the company announced earlier, it is keeping 400 jobs at its HVAC headquarters and engineering organization in Indianapolis.

Chuck Jones, president of the United Steelworkers Local 1999, which represents the 1,400 Carrier employees who will lose their jobs, said he also met with the governor, but the conversation wasn't hopeful.

Jones said Carrier has made up its mind, and the company's insistence that it's moving because of the regulatory environment for businesses is a smokescreen.

"I don't want to build up any falsehood in anybody's minds," Jones said. "We're going to do everything we possibly can because we owe it to the people."

Carrier plans to pay its Mexican workers a base wage of $3 an hour, Jones said. Workers in the Indianapolis facility can earn more than $70,000 a year with overtime.

Call IndyStar reporter Kris Turner at (317) 444-6047. Follow him on Twitter: @krisnturner.

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