- Joined
- May 22, 2011
- Messages
- 10,821
- Reaction score
- 3,348
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Centrist
"At the news conference announcing Amazon’s decision to locate in Queens, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said, “You’re going to see union jobs in construction.”
...there is nothing in the agreement between New York and Amazon that calls for the company to use union labor to build its new headquarters. Indeed, given chief executive Jeff Bezos’s libertarian bent, and Amazon’s tendency to use technology to keep costs down, it seems likely that it wouldn’t use the construction unions.
But it was quite clear from the remarks of the mayor and the governor that the unions are going to get this job. In other words, no longer able to compete in the marketplace, the construction unions are using their political allies to land a big job they would probably not get otherwise. In effect, Amazon is being used as a pass-through to send $1 billion in tax dollars to the construction unions.
Why Is New York Paying Amazon More Than Virginia? -- You’ll find the answer in who’s doing the construction.