Mayor Zohran Mamdani and other New York City leaders are challenging the controversial business model that underpins Amazon’s vast delivery network — and the fight’s consequences could stretch far beyond the five boroughs.
Members of the city council hope to pass the Delivery Protection Act, a bill that would force Amazon, FedEx and other logistics companies to hire the drivers who deliver packages to New Yorkers. Though many customers might not realize it, the guy wearing an Amazon uniform and driving an Amazon van is not employed by Amazon — he typically works for one of Amazon’s “delivery service partners,” or DSPs.
The democratic socialist mayor and other backers of the bill say that system has allowed Amazon to skirt the legal responsibilities of employment while still controlling workers. By making drivers direct employees of Amazon, the law would open the company up to a host of legal liabilities, including wage and safety protections, and strip it of a valuable structural advantage against union organizing.
The battle is likely to move to other blue cities and states. In fact, a similar bill has already popped up in Chicago under the same name.
But Amazon is pushing back. The company warns it might pull its delivery operations out of New York City if the bill passes, leading to fewer jobs and longer delivery times because drivers would have to pick up packages from hubs in Connecticut or New Jersey. DSP owners who would lose their Amazon work have mobilized against the proposal, saying it would destroy their firms.
“They have managed to do home delivery at a scale that now dwarfs even UPS, without having a single delivery person be their employee.”
– David Weil
Kelly Nantel, an Amazon spokesperson, said the company is “committed to creating good jobs” and to supporting the companies it contracts with.
“But as written, this legislation would directly undermine that commitment — threatening the small businesses that deliver to customers, putting the jobs of more than 5,000 of their employees at risk, and forcing us to consider relocating delivery operations outside of the city,” Nantel said in a statement. “This would likely mean slower and more expensive delivery.”
Amazon is up against labor unions and progressive worker advocates who view its delivery system as the reflection of a broader scourge that’s been driving down working conditions for decades.
“We cannot hide from the fact that some corporations are so large and influential that their business practices impact entire industries,” Julie Su, New York’s deputy mayor for economic justice, told JS in an interview. “This model has proliferated across the economy… and all of that has contributed to jobs that are more precarious and less secure for working people.”
“It has really threatened a century’s worth of labor protections,” she added.
Bloomberg via Getty Images
Amazon’s delivery network might be the modern apotheosis of what labor academic David Weil calls the “fissured workplace”: when a large company focuses on a core competency (package delivery) and hands off as much of the work as possible to smaller firms that compete against one another. Weil argues this decades-long corporate trend has helped companies cut costs but at the expense of workers’ wages and safety.
FedEx pioneered the outsourcing playbook in the transportation sector long ago, but Weil says that Amazon has taken it “to a new, higher level,” in part by using algorithms and AI to steer the work of the people it technically doesn’t employ.
“They have managed to do home delivery at a scale that now dwarfs even UPS, without having a single delivery person be their employee,” Weil told JS. “Proof of the success as a business model is the fact that people think Amazon is delivering their products. And Amazon gives you every reason to believe that.”
Luc Albert Rene knows the confusion well. He delivers around 300 Amazon parcels a day from an Amazon facility in Queens, but he’s employed by one of the thousands of Amazon DSPs. Rene said one of his customers recently chatted with him about his job after he delivered a package wearing his regular blue-and-black Amazon uniform.
“When I told him Amazon doesn’t recognize us as employees, he was just shocked,” said Rene, who earns $24.25 an hour after three years.
“We cannot hide from the fact that some corporations are so large and influential that their business practices impact entire industries.”
– Julie Su, New York City’s deputy mayor for economic justice
Rene argues that Amazon ultimately controls the working conditions and that the DSP arrangement is really a construct to avoid legal accountability.
“Amazon keeps claiming we don’t work for them, and yet Amazon dictates our starting time, when we should get back to the station… Amazon has all the control,” he said.
(Steve Kelly, an Amazon spokesperson, said Amazon assigns dispatch windows to “manage facility operations,” but maintained that “DSPs set the schedules for their own employees.”)
Rene has been trying to build support for the Delivery Protection Act with help from the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, one of the legislation’s biggest backers. Organizing Amazon has become imperative for the Teamsters, whose membership has dropped from more than 2 million in the 1970s to around 1.25 million today. Amazon’s influence as a massive non-union employer affects pay and working conditions across the logistics industry, including at UPS, where more than 300,000 Teamsters work.
The Amazon model makes organizing a greater challenge. The Teamsters have to unionize drivers one DSP at a time, and any gains can be quickly erased if those firms lose their contracts with Amazon. When the union said in 2023 that it had organized a firm of roughly 80 drivers and dispatchers in California, Amazon said it had already decided to drop the DSP. The retailer attributed the decision to poor performance; the Teamsters said it was to kill the union.
Su declined to discuss how the bill could benefit union organizing, saying the proposal is largely about street safety. A report last year from the city’s Office of the Comptroller found that injury-related crashes increased in 78% of areas where a last-mile facility opened up.
Officials argue that making companies like Amazon legally accountable for delivery quotas would help ensure drivers don’t endanger pedestrians, other drivers or themselves. Beyond the direct-hire mandate, the law would also force last-mile facilities to obtain licenses and meet certain safety and training standards.
Jerome Sloss, who drives for a Queens-based DSP, said he and other drivers sometimes end up in white rental vans with broken locks or no working air conditioning, wheeling packages around on busted hand trucks. He believes the equipment would be better if Amazon were responsible for it.
“All of these problems should point back at Amazon, but because of the way they have the business set up, they constantly tell us to talk to our DSP about it,” he said. “Their favorite excuse is ‘It’s not controlled by us.’ It’s a lie, of course. Everything is set by Amazon.”
Amazon argues the legislation is built on “misconceptions” around its safety record. The company says serious crashes in its delivery network dropped by 23% last year. Driver-monitoring technologies have made deliveries less dangerous, the company argues, with DSP managers being alerted automatically when the systems detect unsafe behavior.
Bashar Yazgi, who owns the Bronx-based DSP Logistics XPress, said he has had only two serious accidents in three years among his roughly 170 drivers.
“Our safety record is impeccable,” Yazgi said. “We pay our own insurance. It’s in our best interest to make sure that we’re promoting a safety-first culture.”
He compares the DSP system to the fast-food business model, which has also drawn fire from worker advocates.
“I don’t see how it’s any different from working for a McDonald’s franchise owner,” Yazgi said. “You represent the brand and you’re wearing a McDonald’s uniform. There’s no difference here.”
Yazgi has been outspoken in his opposition to the Delivery Protection Act. Under the legislation, his DSP would not exist. He says he has invested more than $1 million in it.
Rudy Cazares, another DSP owner, said he believes the legislation is really about helping the Teamsters grow.
“You don’t have to be in politics” to understand, Cazares said, noting the union has rallied in support of the bill.
He said he’s not opposed to stronger safety protections for drivers.
“But when you have a direct-hire mandate, it’s just a very slick way of eliminating us, the small business owners, to be able to go after Amazon,” he said.
“When you have a direct-hire mandate, it’s just a very slick way of eliminating us, the small business owners, to be able to go after Amazon.”
– Rudy Cazares, DSP owner
Weil said Amazon’s growth could be “existential” for the high-paying jobs associated with UPS. Although Amazon and UPS have comparable starting pay rates, UPS drivers earn far more as their seniority increases, with the top pay rate hitting $49 next year in New York under the union contract. Many UPS drivers already crack $100,000 a year with overtime, viewing it as the sort of long-term career not often associated with Amazon delivery. Amazon says driver pay at DSPs will average around $24 per hour next year.
“Amazon has created a system that can displace UPS from some of its core markets,” Weil said. “The whole system that UPS has — that includes union contracts and protections — is under enormous pressure.”
Federal regulators have tried to make Amazon responsible for drivers as a “joint employer” alongside its DSPs, but those efforts were led by Democrats under former President Joe Biden. The Trump administration has moved federal policy in the other direction, giving Amazon more leeway for its outsourcing model and much less to worry about when it comes to unions.
That’s one reason the stakes are so high for the legislation in New York City: It’s an effort by local leaders to break the DSP model in the nation’s most important market. The bill’s substance could change in the coming weeks, but it already has supermajority support on the city council, boding well for passage this year.
Asked if she’s worried about Amazon pulling its hubs out of the city, Su said it wouldn’t change the Mamdani administration’s support for the bill.
“Of course we want companies to stay in New York City,” she said. “But we will not sacrifice health and safety as a cost of doing business.”