Nearly 500 Queens Amazon drivers laid off without proper notice, Teamsters allege

Amazon DBK4 facility in Maspeth was home to two delivery service partner companies that the conglomerate severed ties with.  Screenshot via Google Maps

By Ryan Schwach

Nearly 500 Queens workers were laid off after Amazon ended contracts with their employers without providing proper notice, the Teamsters union alleged in a new federal complaint.

The Teamsters filed the complaint with the Department of Labor, claiming the billion-dollar conglomerate did not give the legally required notice to workers before they cut ties with the third-party delivery companies they work for, effectively laying them off.

“One day you wake up and you go to work, and you know you're going there to provide for your family, and then they tell you that in 12 days you're not going to have a job anymore,” former driver and union organizer Maria Degante said through a translator.

Degante, a Forest Hills resident, worked for two different delivery service partners, small businesses that Amazon uses to contract drivers for local routes. Both lost their contracts with Amazon, and Degante was laid off each time.

“You're thinking ahead about whether you're going to make rent, whether you need to go and start applying for unemployment,” she said. “The family itself gets destabilized because now you know you don't have that security that you're going to have a paycheck in the future.”

Degante worked as a driver for one of Amazon’s delivery service partners before being laid off. Drivers at DSPs wear Amazon uniforms, drive Amazon trucks and are managed by the company, but are not granted the same protections as Amazon employees since the company does not claim them as employees.

The third-party drivers have complained about heavy workloads, little pay, poor working conditions and vindictive practices from Amazon.

DSPs are currently the subject of a bill sponsored by Queens Councilmember Tiffany Cabán that would rein in Amazon and other companies' use of the third-party drivers.

Even though Amazon doesn’t directly contract the workers, the Teamsters union claims in its complaint filed this week that when Amazon cancels its contract with the drivers’ employers, it is essentially forcing the DSPs to shutter or lay off workers.

The union says that Amazon is often the DSPs only client, something often required in their contracts, so when Amazon ends the relationship, the company goes under.

“Our research and public records indicate that Amazon has knowingly induced and caused mass layoffs and closures through termination of contracts with its DSPs, violating the rights of workers to receive adequate notice or be compensated for the related deficiencies,” the complaint read.

The union further claimed that when Amazon has cut ties with the companies, effectively firing drivers, it did not give enough notice under the New York WARN Act, which requires at least a 90-day notice for mass layoffs.

This was the case for five DSPs in Queens, three of which operated out of the large DBK 4 warehouse in Maspeth, between 2023 and 2025. Around 492 workers were laid off when Amazon cut the five contracts.

In the five cases, the most notice Amazon gave workers before they cut the contract was 16 days. In one case involving Cornucopia Logistics, Amazon didn’t tell workers until six days after the contract was severed in September 2025.

Many Queens Amazon workers have unionized with the Teamsters in the last two years.  Eagle photo by Ryan Schwach

Champion Logistics laid off 87 drivers at DBK 4 in 2024 when Amazon ended its contract with just over a week’s notice. Degante was one of them.

“These DSPs have hundreds of families that work there,” she said. “It's a whole community essentially that gets affected by this.”

“Their families need stability and these short employment notices basically just blow all that up,” she added. “They're not just numbers, they're parents. They have families that they have to take care of.”

In response to the Teamsters complaint, Amazon reasserted that the DSPs are independent, and that Amazon is not responsible for what happens to their workers when contracts are severed.

“DSPs are independent small businesses,” said Amazon spokesperson Steve Kelly. “They make their own decisions when it comes to hiring, fleet management, capacity planning, and route assignments – and whether they want to work with other companies besides Amazon. That includes decisions about whether to close their businesses, and it's the DSP's responsibility to comply with all applicable WARN laws when they do.”

“We ask DSPs to keep us informed so that if they do cease operations, we're able to connect impacted individuals with other DSPs in the area who may be hiring and to ensure continuity of delivery services for customers,” Amazon’s statement continued.

Earlier this month, Mayor Zohran Mamdani threw his support behind the Delivery Protection Act, Cabán’s bill that would effectively ban the use of the third-party Delivery Service Partners.

“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 Teamsters are in strong support of the bill, which has yet to come to a vote in the Council, but is backed by a supermajority of its members.