Posted on 02/16/2019 4:34:20 PM PST by Sub-Driver
Bill de Blasio: The Path Amazon Rejected
It could have answered the concerns of citizens. Instead it bolted.
By Bill de Blasio
Mr. de Blasio is mayor of New York City.
Feb. 16, 2019
The first word I had that Amazon was about to scrap an agreement to bring 25,000 new jobs to New York City came an hour before it broke in the news on Thursday.
The call was brief and there was little explanation for the company’s reversal.
Just days before, I had counseled a senior Amazon executive about how they could win over some of their critics. Meet with organized labor. Start hiring public housing residents. Invest in infrastructure and other community needs. Show you care about fairness and creating opportunity for the working people of Long Island City.
There was a clear path forward. Put simply: If you don’t like a small but vocal group of New Yorkers questioning your company’s intentions or integrity, prove them wrong.
Instead, Amazon proved them right. Just two hours after a meeting with residents and community leaders to move the project forward, the company abruptly canceled it all.
I am a lifelong progressive who sees the problem of growing income and wealth inequality. The agreement we struck with Amazon back in November was a solid foundation. It would have created: at least 25,000 new jobs, including for unionized construction and service workers; partnerships with public colleges; and $27 billion in new tax revenue to fuel priorities from transit to affordable housing — a ninefold return on the taxes the city and state were prepared to forgo to win the headquarters.
The retail giant’s expansion in New York encountered opposition in no small part because of growing frustration with corporate America.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
My bet is the Unions laid down the law to Amazon, and Amazon answered back. Amazon has been known to lock the doors on a build and walk away.
At 650 million per building.
Bezos does not like blackmail.
Maybe bozos figured out that the taxes would be increased again and again, so even with the incentives, it would not pay to build business in New York Sh*tty.
Unfortunately NYC didn’t reject Bill de Blasio. It still has him, sans Amazon.
“Start hiring public housing residents.”
This is the same idea idiot liberals use when planning mass rail transit systems. Instead of using the systems to reduce load on and provide alternatives to existing paths for people already traveling in a certain area, they *always* start by running a line from a public housing/low income area straight to the white collar business center/downtown. Then they wonder why the public housing residents/low income residents can’t find jobs in downtown... Maybe because said residents don’t have the skills needed at those businesses?
Can’t tell them that, though.
Remove genderist resttooms in Amazon offices and let the workers crap on the floor next to their desk.
In other words, spread a little "walking around money" to a cohort of greedy palms.
They must have crunched the numbers on the payoffs needed and decided that they were too high.
Or just wait until Bill De Commie-o is no longer mayor.
“....win over some of their critics. Meet with organized labor”
Meet with the Sopranos, that is.
Yo! Warren!
Yes, you, Warren Wilhelm! Never mind the fake name you’re using.
Did you really say this: “I had counseled a senior Amazon executive about how they could win over some of their critics. Meet with organized labor. Start hiring public housing residents. Invest in infrastructure and other community needs.”
WASAMATTAYOU? YOU STUPIT?
LOL. Basically corporate-speak for GFY.
Unreal. Used to be a company decided their own needs and where they needed to be and did not have to kowtow to every special interest group around. Too many states offer all these incentives to locate and that is the problem.
If Amazon had not needed all those incentives then there would have been no real controversy. Even so people on the Left and Cortex blew off good jobs and all that entailed because of abject stupidity and they think they have won a great victory.
Let New York circle the drain.
> Isn’t Bill a wealthy person who participates in wealth inequality? How about giving the bulk of your wealth away... <
de Blasio doesn’t need to go that far. Just pay everyone who works for city government the same. The mayor, the police chief, the rookie cop, the janitor who just got hired. Pay them all the same.
No, strike that. If the janitor has more minor children than does the mayor, the janitor must be paid more than the mayor.
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”
That’s a good bet....
Maybe the idiot mayor should have asked for Trumps advice...
Maybe they just got tired of dealing with you, Mr. Blasio, and the Governor and everyone else. Just thinking out loud here, but it sounds like the whole thing was very tumultuous and tedious, even down to questions like who would be allowed to bid on construction contracts.
Amazon was pretty clear in their announcement: They want to set up shop in places that welcome them, not places that negotiate every detail. That alone tells them what it would be like to work there in the decades to come. Even more specifically, the whole affair became a spectacle - nobody, no company, wants that much scrutiny on what they are doing. They also probably didn’t want to be your show pony. They are there to do business, not politicking.
This wasn’t written by him, was it? Couldn’t be - he isn’t going to call himself a Bolshevik....
More than $15 hr - I believe I heard that average pay would have been well north of $125K, maybe 175K. Its NYC remember, where $2500 month gets a one room with no view and kick the cockroaches out of the way to cook and don’t mind the kitties with the long rails and buck teeth apartment.
“Meet with organized labor. Start hiring public housing residents. Invest in infrastructure and other community needs. Show you care about fairness”
All of that BS is total socialist talking points. I think Amazon wants workers, not provide welfare for a bunch of people.
The answer is, Amazon didn't take his advice. They went elsewhere.
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