Transit Workers Against Amazon?
New York’s transit workers have enormous leverage over Amazon. But to use it, they will have to break with Andrew Cuomo.
TWU Local 100 members speak inside the rotunda of the Wisconsin state capital in Madison on February 25, 2011. TWU / Flickr
On November 13, news broke that Amazon would build new offices in New York City and outside Washington DC, with plans to bring roughly twenty-five thousand white-collar employees to each location. The announcement followed a multiyear search process in which the company received detailed bids from hundreds of cities, many offering the company billions in public money.
In New York, the state and city governments have offered Amazon more than $2 billion in subsidies, and the project may qualify for additional federal tax breaks. The site in Long Island City, Queens now slated as the location of the new Amazon campus had previously been set to house 1,500 new affordable housing units.
In New York, protests against the deal mobilized almost immediately, citing, among other things, a lack of transparency and community input. Others noted the severe impact the development will have on rents and infrastructure across the dense working-class neighborhoods of Western Queens.
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