https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/...rginia/576313/
Amazon HQ2 and the ‘Gentrification of Jobs’
Amazon has said each HQ2 site will result in 25,000 jobs. Will the working-class benefit? Will Amazon train locals for future employment?
SARAH HOLDER
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“Only New Yorkers could complain about getting 25,000 new jobs,” comedian Colin Jost laughed on a recent episode of Saturday Night Live. “All the cities who lost out must be like, ‘shut up, you whiny bitches.’” The joke obviously referenced Amazon’s announcement that starting in 2019, the company will begin to grow two 25,000-employee offices; one in Long Island City, Queens, and another in Northern Virginia. (It will also put a 5,000-employee office in Nashville, Tennessee.)
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The New Yorkers who are fighting Amazon’s move aren’t job haters, they’ll tell you, even the ones that stood in the rain outside State Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan’s office last week, yelling “New York is not for sale.” Nor are Washingtonians and Virginians, even those who’ve opposed the project at Arlington county council meetings. The growing number of vocal Amazon NIMBYs are mostly not-shutting-up about everything else they fear a tech giant could mean for their neighborhoods—sky-high housing prices, clogged public transit, and squandered taxpayer money. Those factors have been projected to be anything from extreme to negligible in the already-booming cities, depending on who you ask.
But the impact of the burst of jobs itself is murkier still. “When we talk about bringing jobs to the community, we need to dig deep,” wrote New York’s U.S. Congresswoman-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter, days after the deal was announced. “Has the company promised to hire in the existing community? What's the quality of jobs + how many are promised? Are these jobs low-wage or high wage? Are there benefits? Can people collectively bargain?”
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New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio says they’ll be “new” and “good-paying.” Amazon says they’ll be salaried at an average of $150,000, and little else. Community organizers say they’ll be out of reach for the people that need them most. “We know Amazon will be contributing to gentrification of communities,” said Maritza Silva-Farrell, the executive director of The Alliance for a Greater New York. “As well as the gentrification of jobs.”
While Amazon didn’t comment on the distribution of the salaries nor the range of positions (even when CityLab requested comment), evidence from their first HQ in Seattle shows that many of the roles they hire for are high-level administrative and software engineering ones—meant for people with an advanced coding background, and usually a bachelor’s degree.
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But a corporate headquarters can’t operate on the labor of techies alone. It needs service workers, and administrative assistants, and IT specialists to keep the place running. Stephen Fuller, director of the Institute for Research on the Washington Region’s Economic Future, predicted in the Washingtonian that support staff could end up being a large quotient of the headquarters, creating thousands of “pretty good jobs,” ranging from security to equipment servicing and building management.
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At a presentation for Queens residents late last month, the New York City Economic Development Corporation said that only half of the Amazon jobs would be tech-related, according to the Washington Business Journal; and the Virginia Economic Development Partnership has said the Virginia jobs will be similarly distributed.
“When we talk about the tech sector it’s important to think more broadly,” said Elizabeth Lindsey, the executive director of Byte Back, a D.C.-based non-profit that trains underserved communities in the district with tech and computer skills. “Not everyone wants to be a software engineer.”
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Amazon’s choice to locate in two “superstar cities” has been criticized as a missed opportunity to invest in somewhere needier: New York already hosts the most corporate headquarters (and the accompanying revenue) of any city in the country, and the D.C. region isn’t far behind. “This is an inevitability of how tech works,” said Mark Muro, Senior Fellow and Policy Director at the Brookings Institute Metropolitan Policy Program. “Leave tech to its own devices, and its location decisions will serve to pile onto the places it is already.”
But the choice, however strategic, has another consequence. Both immediate regions already rank high on employment metrics: Arlington has a 2 percent unemployment rate, the lowest of any jurisdiction in Virginia; and Long Island City’s is 4.6 percent, lower than New York City’s and only slightly above the 4.1 percent national rate.
“A lot of people talk about ‘Oh, it’s going to hire locally,’” said Abraham. “There’s not enough people to hire locally.” Instead, he fears, they’ll be flown in from out of state, eating up housing as they come.
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In the agreements with Virginia and New York, Amazon seemed to account for more jobs than the initial 25,000: In Virginia’s agreement, the company estimated that, after a second hiring phase, a total of 37,850 could be created; and New York’s also indicated a potential for 40,000 total new jobs within 15 years of entering the city.
.....But the most important part of linking people with good jobs is training them to fill them, says Catherine Bracy, the executive director and co-founder of the Tech Equity Collaborative, a Silicon Valley organizing group. Cities have to ask, “Do people have the skills to compete in the 21st century economy?” And, if not, “are there the social supports that can help them get through the transition?” In other words: how strong is your workforce development program, and how can you make it stronger?
New York’s agreement nodded to that priority. Together, the state, the city, and the company have pledged $15 million total towards workforce development starting in 2020; $5 million of it will be from Amazon.
Amazon will send representatives to jobs fairs and resume workshops in the Queensbridge Houses starting in 2020. (They're only held to the contract for three years, though—after that, it’s up to the company to continue the partnership.)
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The programming also “may include” partnerships with city technology training programs, and third-party organizations like Pursuit, which trains high-need New Yorkers (including public housing residents) with technical skills. “With Amazon coming here to Queens, Pursuit’s job here is to try to bring the community to Amazon,” says Jukay Hsu, Pursuit’s Founder & CEO.
New York City council speaker Corey Johnson, who has been vocally opposed to the Amazon deal, has expressed faith in Pursuit but not in Amazon. “Speaker Johnson hopes that Pursuit’s proposed partnership with Amazon proves fruitful in terms of bringing jobs to low-income residents of Long Island City and Queensbridge Houses,” the spokesperson said. “But [he] remains concerned about the entire Amazon deal in terms of its lack of public input and level of subsidy.”
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NEW YORK is Back!
“Office buildings are our factories – whether for tech, creative or traditional industries we must continue to grow our modern factories to create new jobs,” said United States Senator Chuck Schumer.
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