New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani threw his weight behind legislation that would force Amazon and other companies to directly employ their delivery workers, a move the retailer warns could push thousands of jobs out of the city and raise costs for every household.
Mamdani endorsed the Delivery Protection Act on Monday, calling it "common-sense 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." The bill, known formally as Intro 518, would bar companies from subcontracting core warehouse and delivery work at last-mile facilities and require workers to be directly employed by the facility operator.
Amazon fired back within hours. Spokeswoman Kelly A. Nantel told the New York Post that the legislation "would directly undermine" the company's commitment to New York, "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." Amazon currently works with more than 40 local Delivery Service Partners across the five boroughs.
The battle lines are sharp. On one side stands the mayor and the Teamsters union. On the other: Amazon, FedEx, a coalition of small-business delivery operators, and the Business Council of New York State, all warning that the bill would destroy the very jobs it claims to protect.
Rudy Cazares, a New York City native who runs an Amazon Delivery Service Partner and also contracts with FedEx, employs roughly 130 people. His drivers start at $23.75 an hour and earn about $27 an hour with experience. All are W-2 employees with benefits and payroll taxes, not gig workers, not off-the-books labor.
If the bill passes, Cazares said, none of that matters.
"I would be shutting my business down. I have no business."
Cazares described the delivery model in plain terms: Amazon controls the sorting and staging of packages at its facilities, and his drivers pick them up and deliver them. The direct-hire mandate would eliminate the need for independent operators like him entirely.
"This direct hire mandate will eliminate every small business out there that delivers packages for any business."
What stung Cazares most was the process. He told the Post that nobody from the city consulted the operators who actually run these businesses before pushing the legislation forward.
"There's been no dialogue that includes the small businesses that are the ones making this happen."
That complaint cuts to the core of the dispute. The mayor framed the bill as a check on corporate exploitation. But the people standing to lose their livelihoods are not billion-dollar corporations, they are local entrepreneurs running delivery routes, paying taxes, and employing workers who largely lack college degrees.
The New York Delivers coalition, which includes FedEx and a range of delivery operators, planned a 1 p.m. press conference Monday at Thomas Jefferson Park in East Harlem to push back against the bill. The coalition's numbers paint a stark picture: up to 10,000 city delivery jobs could be at risk. In Harlem and four adjoining City Council districts alone, an estimated 3,500 last-mile delivery positions hang in the balance.
The workforce demographics make the stakes harder for the bill's supporters to brush aside. New York Delivers says 82 percent of the last-mile delivery workforce does not have a college degree, and 84 percent is non-white. A mandate that wipes out independent delivery operators would fall hardest on workers who have the fewest alternatives.
Steve Smith, a spokesperson for the Business Council of New York State, was blunt in his assessment.
"This law is just going to raise prices for consumers."
A study by the consultancy AKRF backed that claim with a specific number: the legislation would add an estimated $664 per year in costs for every New York City household receiving deliveries. And if Amazon and other companies respond by moving delivery operations outside city limits, the study found those deliveries would become "significantly slower" and "more costly", the opposite of what consumers want.
Mamdani's endorsement came despite a warning from within his own government. At an April City Council hearing on the bill, Carlos Ortiz, the deputy commissioner of external affairs at the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, urged lawmakers to proceed carefully.
"We want to make sure we don't have unintended consequences."
That is a polite way of saying the city's own consumer-protection agency is not confident the bill will work as advertised. When your own administration's regulatory arm is waving a caution flag, pressing ahead looks less like conviction and more like ideology overriding evidence.
Council Speaker Julie Menin, a Manhattan Democrat, has not committed either way. Her spokesperson said Menin was waiting for the "bill to go through the legislative process, to receive input and engagement from stakeholders." That measured posture suggests the bill's path through the Council is far from guaranteed, and that at least some Democrats recognize the political risk of backing a measure that could spike delivery costs and eliminate working-class jobs.
The Teamsters, unsurprisingly, sided with the mayor. Spokesman Matt McQuaid dismissed Amazon's objections as corporate spin, telling the Post:
"Amazon will say or do whatever it takes to deny workers stronger rights and wages and abdicate its responsibilities for its own employees, which is why journalists are obliged to expose these greedy corporate tactics and not serve as stenographers for the company's anti-worker propaganda."
The union's framing treats the issue as a simple contest between workers and a mega-corporation. But that framing ignores the small-business operators, people like Cazares, who employ those workers right now, pay them W-2 wages with benefits, and stand to lose everything under the mandate. The Teamsters want direct employment by the facility operator. The operators who already provide direct employment through their own companies are the ones being squeezed out.
FedEx, for its part, acknowledged the bill's existence without taking a strong public stance. A spokesperson called last-mile delivery facilities "an increasingly essential part of the infrastructure that keeps New York City running" and said the company was working with the New York Delivers coalition. Any questions on the legislation, the spokesperson said, could be directed to the coalition.
The mayor cast his support in the language of corporate accountability. He accused companies like Amazon of building "billion-dollar business models by insulating themselves from accountability through a system of exploitative subcontracting." It is the kind of line that plays well with progressive activists and union halls.
But the facts on the ground tell a different story. The subcontractors in question are not shell companies dodging labor law. Cazares employs 130 people on W-2 payroll with benefits. His drivers earn competitive wages. His business exists because the delivery model works, for him, for his employees, and for the millions of New Yorkers who rely on fast, affordable package delivery.
Strip away the rhetoric and the bill does three things: it threatens to eliminate thousands of jobs held disproportionately by workers of color without college degrees, it risks adding $664 a year to every household's delivery costs, and it could push Amazon's operations outside city limits entirely, making deliveries slower and more expensive for everyone left behind.
Amazon's language about relocating was conditional, the company said the bill would force it "to consider" moving operations. But the threat is credible precisely because the economics are straightforward. If the city makes it more expensive and legally risky to operate inside its borders, companies will go where the rules make more sense. They always do.
When a city's own consumer-protection agency warns about unintended consequences, when small-business owners say they will have to shut down, and when the workers most likely to lose their jobs are the ones the bill claims to help, the responsible move is to listen. Mayor Mamdani chose to grandstand instead.
