Our Perspective
The Experts Tell Us
What’s Wrong with
the Amazon Deal
By Stuart Appelbaum, President
Retail, Wholesale and Department
Store Union, UFCW
BRONX TIMES REPORTER, J BTR ANUARY 25-31, 2019 19
In January, the RWDSU and four community
organizations – Alliance for a Greater New York
(ALIGN), Make the Road New York (MRNY), New
York Communities for Change (NYCC), and Local
Progress – conducted a briefing in the RWDSU’s New
York City office to discuss our recently released report
“What’s Wrong With Amazon.” Elected officials from Seattle and New York and
economic experts discussed Amazon’s effect on communities, and what New
Yorkers may expect from Amazon coming to Queens to build its new HQ, with
the benefit of $3 billion in public subsidies.
The picture they painted was one of a trillion-dollar company that may
take a lot more from communities than it gives back.
NYC City Council Speaker Corey Johnson: “Our city and state got played
by Amazon. We need to stand for worker justice and transparency in NYC,
and the people in our communities, not trillion-dollar companies.”
NYC Comptroller Scott Stringer: “The size of these tax benefits is
unprecedented and shines a light on the problems with two outdated programs
that were meant to attract new business to invest in struggling communities
outside of Manhattan. Long-time residents of Long Island City, who made the
neighborhood appealing for companies like Amazon in the first place, now
stand to see huge rent increases. We need to examine these programs that are
giving away over a billion dollars in public money, and work with Albany to
reform REAP and ICAP to ensure a deal like this never happens again.”
NY State Senate Deputy Leader Mike Gianaris: “We are creating 90,000
jobs a year in New York City without giving billions to Amazon, and it’s
estimated this deal will just add about 2 percent to that total. Three billion
dollars could be much better invested in our many infrastructure needs
instead of subsidizing the richest corporation on Earth”
NYC City Councilmember Jimmy Van Bramer: “Amazon says this project
will be a pipeline of jobs for our city, but we know that may not be true
because what we’ve seen and heard about in Seattle. This project will bring in
outsiders who could drive up the rents and push out the people that this deal
is supposed to benefit.”
Greg LeRoy, Executive Director of Good Jobs First: “Since creating its
tax-break office in 2012, Amazon has been getting about 20 subsidy
packages a year – more than $1.6 billion even before HQ2. And like Walmart,
we now know that their deals often include hidden taxpayer costs.”
Seattle City Councilmember Lisa Herbold: “We need a compact that
creates new corporate responsibility. Councilmember Mosqueda and I are here
because we believe that cities need to stop competing and lay down joint
conditions in negotiating. Your efforts here could represent a turning point for
negotiating development that is inclusive and accountable.”
Seattle City Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda: “Over 1,000 people a
month are moving to Seattle, which doesn’t prevent the city’s economic
inequality between rich and poor from exploding.”
Lazar Treschan, of the Community Service Society: “Without investment
in our schools and universities to create a tech talent pipeline, subsidizing jobs
that real New Yorkers won’t get doesn’t make a lot of sense. We should be
subsidizing universal high school internships and our higher
education instead, so New Yorkers can compete for the
jobs that these development projects are bringing into
our communities.”
Amazon’s business model is based upon feasting
on public subsidies and paying little or no income
taxes while mistreating and dehumanizing its
workers. This is not what New York needs.
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