Amazon ditched its plans to open its headquarter in New York City and the move made Mayor Bill de Blasio say that the retail giant just showed what "abuse of corporate power" looks like. NYC's mayor is clearly upset after he openly criticized Jeff Bezos' company on air.
On Sunday, De Blasio appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press" hosted by Chuck Todd and expressed his disappointments over Amazon's cancellation of building its second headquarters in their state. The mayor helped push the deal so he blasted the company for suddenly taking back its words.
"I have no problem with fellow progressives criticizing a deal or wanting more from Amazon," De Blasio told Todd during the show. "I wanted more from Amazon, too, but the bottom line is, this is an example of an abuse of corporate power.
He believes that the reason Amazon retracted its plans to set up its HQ2 in New York City was due to criticisms that it received for refusing to discuss any unionization of its workforce where the company would pledge to have salaries of workers on average of $150,000 per year.
New York has one of the most extensive unionized workforces in the U.S. thus Amazon's refusal to talk about the unionization will not work in the city. Politicians slammed Amazon after New York offered tax incentives and this may have played some part for its decision to ditch the HQ2 project in Queens.
With this, De Blasio accused Amazon of reacting negatively and not taking in criticisms constructively, and this led to the cancellation of the project.
"Amazon took their ball and went home and what they did was confirm people's worst fears about corporate America. Here is the 1 percent dictating to everyone else even though we gave them a fair deal," De Blasio said.
According to USA Today, in November 2018, Amazon picked Queens and Virginia as the winners of the competition to host the company's second headquarters. It was stated that the plan would bring in from 25,000 to 40,000 jobs and generate $27 billion in tax revenue. In exchange, Amazon will get $3 billion in state and local tax subsidies and incentives in addition to lighting the Empire State Building in orange.
But apparently, the plans fell apart and De Blasio blamed Amazon for the botched plans.
"They said they wanted a partnership, but the minute there were criticisms, they walked away," he stated. "What does that say to work people that a company would leave them high and dry simply because some people raised criticisms?"
Amazon disclosed last week that while the headquarters in New York will not push through, it is still interested in moving forward with its original plans for Virginia. It was added that it is also in the middle of working on setting up a center in Nashville.
