Dive Brief:

• PepsiCo has outsourced 260 shared-services jobs in its Winston-Salem, N.C., offices to IBM. 
• The move comes three years after PepsiCo accepted $800,000 in local and state tax incentives to expand its call-center operation in the city.
• The workers are changing employers, but not locations. The 260 jobs will be located -- at least for now -- in Winston-Salem. The workers were also required to take a 10 percent pay cut to keep their jobs, according to local news sources.

Dive Insight:

We have a soft spot for Winston-Salem -- a pretty little city in the Piedmont where we worked years ago. Winston has seen its share of job losses in recent years. The city was once a manufacturing colossus -- home to multiple plants for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco and Hanes. But those days ended long ago amid mergers and legendary leveraged buyouts.

We were impressed three years ago when North Carolina officials convinced PepsiCo not only to stay in Winston, but to expand. It troubles us to learn now that the deal was not enough. Still, we understand where PepsiCo is coming from. We're also impressed two years ago when IBM began won a major deals to run some of PepsiCo's finance and administrative functions. The IBM relationship makes sense for PepsiCo. So all we can do is hope that IBM will commit to keeping its new workers in Winston.