United Technologies intends to hire 35,000 employees over the next five years, including 2,000 new jobs in Connecticut.
The company says $255 million has already been poured into UTC’s research and engineering facilities in East Hartford. Now, the Farmington-based operation will make a $500 million investment into its local facilities.
“For us, this is just a culmination of the last 10 years of investment. And as we look forward for the next five years, we see nothing but upside,” said UTC chairman and CEO Greg Hayes. “But, we need more people and we need a healthy supply chain to do it.”
UTC also announced that it’ll be investing more than $15 billion nationally over the next five years in research and development and capital expenditures. In return, the federal government’s Small Business Administration says it’ll help UTC in propping up the small businesses that work externally to make up UTC’s supply chain.
“We don’t do all the work, right?” Hayes said. “It really comes to the supply chain and that’s where the SBA can be so helpful to us in terms of training, investing, sponsoring these small companies.”
Hayes expects company sales to go up about $3 billion this year, but the long term future of the conglomerate is far from certain: Hayes has said he’s reviewing UTC’s portfolio of businesses--and he’s been under pressure from key investors to break up the company.
