Amazon held 11th hour meeting before pulling the plug on NYC HQ2: Rpts

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Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, speaks to a group of Amazon employees that are veterans during an Amazon Veterans Day celebration on Monday, November 12, 2018.

Amazon held 11th hour meetings with New York and trade union officials before pulling the plug on its Long Island City headquarters, according to reports by Bloomberg and The New York Times.

Amazon executives met on Wednesday morning with union officials from the Retail Wholesale and Department Store Union as well as the AFL–CIO, a national federal of more than 50 labor unions, according to the reports. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo facilitated and hosted the meeting, the reports say.

“It was a very productive meeting, and we were ready to move forward,” Stuart Appelbaum, head of the RWDSU told the New York Times. “We left there thinking we were on the road to dealing with our concerns.”

Amazon executives had earlier drawn criticism from local officials after saying it would continue to discourage employees from unionizing. Now, the city stands to miss out on the majority of the 25,000 jobs that were promised.

The decision to cancel plans for thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in economic investment came as a shock to some government officials and residents. Amazon spent nearly a year fielding proposals from municipalities across North America, made a final decision in November, and apparently deliberated up to the last minute whether to continue with the plans despite political opposition.

Representatives for the trade unions, Amazon and Cuomo did not immediately return a request for comment from CNBC.

Read more at Bloomberg or The New York Times.

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