A meeting was reportedly held on Wednesday between Amazon executives, city government officials, and representatives of labor unions to discuss "outstanding issues." One of the union presidents told Bloomberg that "progress was being made," so it was that much more surprising to him when Amazon announced on Thursday it was canceling its plans to build a HQ2 campus in New York's Queens borough.
"Unfortunately and surprisingly, Amazon abruptly turned their backs," Mario Cilento, the president of AFL-CIO's New York State chapter, told Bloomberg. "An opportunity for thousands of jobs was lost."
"Anything is possible," Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter . "Today was the day a group of dedicated, everyday New Yorkers & their neighbors defeated Amazon's corporate greed, its worker exploitation, and the power of the richest man in the world."
Among the staunchest critics were local politicians . Many took issue with the terms of the deal involved in bringing HQ2, which promised Amazon billions of dollars in tax breaks as incentive for coming to New York City. City Council members were largely kept out of the loop of the deal, and were outraged that their city was paying such a hefty "ransom" to a multi-billion dollar company .
But at the meeting Wednesday, the "framework of a deal" had been reached to address these issues, a union leader present at the meeting told Bloomberg. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo who championed Amazon's presence in New York with NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio had reportedly suggested ideas for how labor union's concerns could be fixed.
"We all agreed to it, and we said the next step was to start drafting language and getting our wordsmiths involved," Stuart Appelbaum, president of the the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union, told Bloomberg. "We all agreed it was a productive meeting, and so we were amazed that Jeff Bezos would decide to just cancel to announce today that he's canceling the project."
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