Something I haven't been able to find: did NYC actually withdraw anything promised for Amazon to back out, or did Amazon just get buyer's remorse after seeing the mixed reaction the city had?

The government was starting to stack against Amazon’s permitting needs. Permitting is already notoriously complex in NYC.

From https://www.businessinsider.com/nyc-council-speaker-amazon-h...

the anti-Amazon movement's best shot at stopping the deal was through the Public Authorities Control Board, which the deal needed approval from. New York State Sen. Michael Gianaris, who has been highly critical of the Amazon deal, was just nominated to the board, and his "no" vote could have scuttled the entire project.

I read that the unions, especialy SEIU, wanted a promise from Amazon against interfering with future potential unionization efforts. Amazon probably doesn't want a domino effect happening where their operations in NYC get unionized and then it spreads elsewhere. But these jobs were tech jobs, so I'm guessing there was also going to be a distribution center or something else that would unionize? Because the tech workers certainly wouldn't.

Amazon already has a pretty big distro center presence just across the river in NJ. I'm sure they would not be too happy if those guys unionized and started demanding humane working conditions.

Excellent question. It is hard to believe that only now did Amazon start caring so much about its already tarnished public image with worker rights and whatnot that they'd roll over so quickly on such a huge deal. I surmise that it was the mayor's office that called off their part of the deal, based on the public statements. The governor had been lacing into the recalcitrant lawmakers who joined the protestors. Both are rumored to want a 2020 Whitehouse run, but the mayor also has a much more public reputation as a "progressive" to defend. This is just my speculating.

> I surmise that it was the mayor's office that called off their part of the deal

Surmise away, but the mayor has been strongly and publicly in favour of the deal, and critical of the people trying to kill the deal. (The guy who really killed it was state senator Michael Gianiaris.)

The problem was that the people who made the deal (de Blasio and Cuomo) didn't have the power, either de facto or de jure, to get it in place.

> If citizens of NY don't want their government to be able to bargain with a business or organization on an individual level

The people clearly don’t want to give NY that power carte blanche. They want oversight to that power—oversight which they just exercised.

Are you implying that citizens should vote and otherwise shut up? Isn't is essential to the functioning of a democracy that citizens voice their opinion and participate in a public discourse?