There are some valid reasons why some cities wouldn’t want the new Amazon headquarters. First, as city leaders Nelon Wolff and Ron Nirenberg exposed, Amazon has sizable demands. The company’s request for proposal asks for the potential home of HQ2 to offer major tax incentives. Amazon has received more than $2 billion in public subsidies. "The word is out, the discussion is ongoing," said Barry Lynn, executive director of Open Markets, an institution that studies corporate monopolies in the U.S.ynn said. "It's not going to go away, it's only going to get louder." "Time and time again, the public has seen promises made and reality is different," he said. One economic policy expert recently told the New York Times that this sort of tactic is basically “blackmail” and equates to “corporate welfare.”
Amazon, has had its fair share of systemic problems. Amazon has long wrestled with a poor reputation for how it treats low- and mid-level workers. A bombshell report by the New York Times two years ago exposed the company’s poor treatment of employees, characterizing the workplace as “bruising.” Amazon’s reputation for the way it treats warehouse workers is particularly poor.
The company has faced accusations of employees who mistreat women and pass them over for upper-level management positions due to their gender. We wrote about some of those problems in greater detail last month.
