Mayor backs Queens pol’s bill to regulate Amazon’s deliveries
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Mayor Zohran Mamdani will support a bill intended to protect third-party delivery drivers. Photo by Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office
By Ryan Schwach
Mayor Zohran Mamdani threw his support behind a Queens legislator's bill that aims to rein in Amazon and other companies’ use of contracted delivery drivers.
Mamdani said Monday he would sign the bill, called the Delivery Protection Act, should it come across his desk.
The bill was introduced by Queens City Councilmember Tiffany Cabán and would require the licensing of the use of last-mile, third-party “Delivery Service Partners.”
Companies like Amazon contract drivers through outside partners, who wear Amazon uniforms and often drive trucks plastered with the company’s logo. Despite all appearances, the workers are not given many of the same benefits and protections as full-time workers.
Several companies use DPS drivers, but Amazon operates multiple warehouses in Queens and other parts of the city, and received the brunt of the mayor’s criticism on Monday.
“Corporations like Amazon build billion-dollar business models by insulating themselves from accountability through a system of exploitative subcontracting,” Mamdani said in a statement. “The Delivery Protection Act is commonsense regulation that protects delivery workers, safeguards the communities where these facilities operate and ensures that the corporations benefiting from workers’ labor are responsible for the consequences of their business practices.”
“New Yorkers should not be forced to subsidize corporate profits with less safe streets and more precarious jobs,” he added.
The Delivery Protection Act would require the licensing of the DPS companies and increase “safety, training and employment requirements,” according to the bill’s text.
“For years, Amazon has relied on a convoluted subcontracting system that denies last-mile drivers the protections other workers get, while maintaining extraordinary control over their schedules, workloads, and uniforms,” said Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice Julie Su. “The Delivery Protection Act would close this loophole, improve safety for drivers and communities and begin to correct the imbalance of power that massive corporations like Amazon have accumulated.”
DPS drivers at two separate Queens warehouses unionized last year – DBK1 in Woodside and DBK4 in Maspeth – arguing poor treatment and retribution from Amazon for speaking up about working conditions.
Christian Trimboli, a born-and-raised Fresh Meadows resident, told the Eagle he was fired last year and his former coworkers believe it happened because he was speaking out about what it’s like to work in the Queens facility.
“They believe that I was fired for speaking up on the job, for wanting to address that things need change here, that we deserve better,” Trimboli said in December. “Every single day I was talking to my co-workers about some of the struggles that Amazon was putting them through, personal things that they were dealing with. We all have our own story.”
Cabán has pushed the bill alongside Amazon workers and the large Teamsters Union, which represents the drivers at the two Queens warehouses.
“It’s time to pass my bill, the Delivery Protection Act, to keep workers and our streets safe and to end the charade of huge corporations hiding behind third-party contractors to evade accountability,” Cabán said in a statement. “I look forward to working with the Mayor and the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection to make this a reality.”
As of Monday, the bill had 34 co-sponsors, enough to push it through the Council with an overwhelming majority should City Council Speaker Julie Menin choose to bring it to a vote.
Menin is not among the bill’s co-sponsors, and has yet to comment publicly on whether she supports the legislation.
A Council spokesperson told the Eagle Monday it “is continuing to go through the legislative process for further input and engagement."
Amazon has continued to push back on the legislation, arguing it would raise delivery costs for consumers and eliminate the small businesses and the workers the bill seeks to protect.
The company has also denied that the DPS drivers are its employees.
“We're equally committed to the local small business partners who work with us every day to provide fast, reliable delivery for New Yorkers,” said company spokesperson Kelly Nantel. “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. This would likely mean slower and more expensive delivery - deteriorating the experience for millions of customers in New York City.”
Amazon said it is working with the Council, and has invited every member to visit the warehouses.
The bill has other detractors, including the Trucking Association of New York, which says the bill would raise costs and cut off opportunities to jobs.
“We should be creating more prospects for New Yorkers to become business owners, not adopting policies that make it harder for small, local transportation companies to compete and push the city toward relying on larger trucks brought in from farther away,” Zach Miller, TANY’s vice president of government affairs, said in a statement. “[The bill] would single out portions of that longstanding logistics model based largely on where a shipment ultimately ends up. In doing so, the Council risks disrupting legitimate business relationships, reducing opportunities for independent transportation businesses, and shifting more deliveries onto larger trucks traveling greater distances into the city.”
