That Thanks for Nothing AOC sign in NYC got a lot of coverage for its message. But it gave too much credit to AOC for Amazon's decision not to place its new HQ2 in New York. Members of the NYC Council and union leaders put the scare in Amazon. Check out Amazon’s New York Project Foundered on Labor Organizing, Opposition to Subsidies:
After the announcement, a group of state and local leaders seized on the incentive package and questioned why one of the richest companies in the world was getting subsidies at all. Cries of corporate welfare and vulture capitalism became refrains among progressive Democrats, including the state’s newest political star, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as well as from within the newly Democratic state senate.
Those politicians, together with union leaders, also beat a drum about Amazon’s stance against organized labor. Members of the New York City Council joined in, grilling company executives at hearings in December and January over their record with unions and about the closed-door negotiations with state and city officials that had produced the biggest project-based incentive package in state history.
“This was a secretive process intentionally structured to avoid a substantive public review in advance of any commitments being made,” City Council Speaker Corey Johnson said at a Jan. 30 hearing.
Amazon executives were completely unprepared for the backlash, according to the people familiar with the matter. Polls showed a majority of New Yorkers supported the new campus, but Amazon grew more wary when state Sen. Mike Gianaris, who represents the project site in Queens, was nominated on Feb. 4 to the Public Authorities Board. The seat meant Mr. Gianaris, an outspoken critic of the deal, could potentially veto the proposed campus.
(Alternate link)
Give credit where credit is due. She probably deserves a little of the blame for chasing away a vibrant large scale employer. But to give her full credit is misplaced.
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1:43 PM 2/24/2019
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