The US corporation is not building a second corporate headquarters in New York.
(Photo: Reuters)
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New York, San Francisco It’s a crushing defeat for Jefff Bezos. In a spectacular U-turn, the world’s largest online retailer and market leader in the billion-dollar cloud computing market is now saying goodbye to its plans to build another headquarters for thousands of employees in Long Island City in the New York borough of Queens.
A handful of local politicians have shown that they do not want to work with Amazon, as it should, is the reason. The search for another location will not be reopened, says Amazon. The plans for another subsidiary headquarters in Arlington near Washington and a logistics center in Nashville, Tennessee, were not affected by the decision.
With a worldwide unique PR campaign, Amazon first looked for the location for an additional headquarters for over a year, collected gigantic mountains of data from 238 applicant cities, then reduced the list to 20 finalists under worldwide attention, and finally named two instead of one location . You should share the potential 50,000 new jobs among yourself.
The sometimes embarrassing contortions that politicians and city leaders exhibited in the course of the selection process in order to gain the goodwill of the company had probably led to something like a kind of collective heights in the leadership team around Jeff Bezos in Seattle. Especially since cities and states didn’t mess up. They placed billions in tax gifts and infrastructure aid at Bezos’ feet for a commitment. New York and Arlington together are said to have offered well over $ 2 billion in tax breaks.
But in New York, Bezos took on the wrong people. In the data-supported selection of favorite locations, criteria such as airport connections, motorways, local public transport, space for new office buildings or universities and restaurants within reach were obviously overrated. The human side, on the other hand, was undervalued, as it turned out.
While real estate agents and developers broke out into feverish activity and the already high rents began to rise again, resistance formed. Local politicians such as the young MP of the House of Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who also has her constituency in Queens, openly warned of the consequences of the settlement for citizens, housing and rents.
Proponents like Andrew Cuomo, governor of New York state, believe that a “small group of politicians would put their own petty political interests above those of the community.” The opponents of the settlement would have to be made “liable”, according to Cuomo, who had joked that he would change his first name to “Amazon” if the deal worked.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, on the other hand, strikes a significantly different note. “You have to be strong if you want to make it in New York,” he wrote in a post on Facebook. “We gave them the chance to become good neighbors and to settle in the best city in the world. But instead of working with us, Amazon just throws everything down. We have the talents and grow every day in a fair economy for everyone. If Amazon can’t see this value – its competitors will.
The disaster apparently started in December. Two Amazon managers presented themselves to representatives of the New York City Council in a hearing, where they were asked about questions of labor market policy and other things. The city officials wanted to ensure that Amazon would hire a significant workforce from Queens, employees of all skin colors.
That’s when it became clear that the total perks that Amazon had promised could soar to over $ 2.5 billion. These figures had not been made public until the contracts were approved. Amazon, US media reports, was completely surprised by the force of the resistance, which leading unions had also joined. Amazon is a declared opponent of trade union organizations.
What they actually had in front of them became clear to the executives from Seattle, who can do whatever they want in their hometown, when their sharpest critic, New York Senator Michael Gianaris, joined a committee with veto rights at practical all decisions about the project was chosen. “Today’s behavior clearly shows,” said Gianaris after Amazon’s departure, “that Amazon would have been a bad partner for New York.”
The New York retail trade union welcomed Amazon’s withdrawal outright: Instead of addressing the legitimate concerns of many New Yorkers, Amazon has made it clear to do it “as we want it or not at all,” it said in a statement.
Elizabeth Warren, one of the Democratic presidential candidates for the 2020 US elections, is particularly drastic: “Amazon, one of the richest companies in the world, is simply abandoning billions of dollars in tax gifts because a few politicians do not court them dearly enough. How much longer do we want to allow such gigantic companies to hold our democracy hostage? “
What the candidate speaks to is a practice that has been practiced for decades by companies such as Foxconn or Tesla: politically playing off locations against each other until the maximum funding is achieved with the lowest possible consideration. The same goes for sports teams. They move from city to city after new stadiums and transfer payments are approved, and then move on after a few years.
Like the Oakland Raiders now, who are moving to Las Vegas. That brings the owners hundreds of millions of dollars and Oakland’s taxpayers are sitting on the old Raiders Stadium while the Las Vegas taxpayers are building the new one for $ 1.9 billion. The City of Oakland has now sued the football team for damages.
On the stock exchange, the Amazon share showed only restrained reactions to the news, it fell by a good one percent. The fact that after years of searching you can simply explain that you don’t really need 25,000 new jobs in New York if you are not welcome apparently only astonishes a few.
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