Mamdani Supports Delivery Bill as Amazon Threatens to Move NYC Operations
New York already has laws that help close the loopholes Amazon uses to deflect blame when it comes to accidents.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced his support for the Delivery Protection Act.
The bill would require companies like Amazon to hire drivers directly rather than subcontract delivery work.
“Corporations like Amazon build billion-dollar business models by insulating themselves from accountability through a system of exploitative subcontracting,” Mamdani said in a statement. “As last-mile delivery centers have exploded across New York, so too have traffic accidents and worker injuries.”
OK, first of all, using subcontractors usually protects Amazon. Key word: usually.
Amazon’s Delivery Service Partner (DPS) model separates the driver from Amazon. However, the company controls the routes, training, and performance standards.
But when it comes to accidents, Amazon claims no responsibility since a separate company employs the driver.
I’m confused, though, because it seems New York has laws that would shift responsibility to Amazon, given the company’s complete control over the service, including leasing out its vehicles.
Therefore, the laws close the loopholes Mamdani and his cronies claim Amazon uses to deflect blame. Hence why I used the word usually above.
Despite those laws, we all know why Mamdani wants the act to pass. We all know why. I’ll get into that more later.
New York’s Commercial Goods Transportation Industry Fair Play Act presumes the delivery driver is “an employee rather than an independent contractor.”
Also, the New York Vehicle and Traffic Law (VTL) § 388 “imposes owner liability for any driver operating with express or implied permission, triggering the owner’s commercial policy even when the owner wasn’t driving.”
That law and Amazon controlling everything allows personal injury attorneys to bypass the DPS shield:
On paper, the DSP is the employer and Amazon is merely a client. In practice, Amazon dictates nearly every aspect of how deliveries are made: drivers wear Amazon uniforms, drive Amazon-branded vans, use Amazon-supplied scanners, follow Amazon routing software, and are evaluated by Amazon performance metrics that can result in the DSP losing its contract.
This level of control creates two powerful theories of liability against Amazon itself.
Ostensible agency applies when a plaintiff reasonably believes a person or entity is an agent of another, and that belief is created by the conduct of the alleged principal. When a driver in an Amazon Logistics uniform, driving a van with the Amazon “smile” logo, delivers a package, the public has every reason to believe that driver works for Amazon. If the driver causes an injury during that delivery, Amazon can be held liable on ostensible agency grounds.
Retained control is a separate theory rooted in New York tort law. A party who retains control over the method and manner of a contractor’s work — as opposed to only the result — loses the protection of the independent contractor defense. Amazon’s micro-management of delivery routes, required scan times, and delivery completion rates demonstrates retained control over the manner of work, not merely the outcome.
The law firm I quoted said the victim usually has claims against the driver, the DSP company, and Amazon.
Am I missing something? It sounds like New York has laws that deflect the blame on Amazon.
A quick Google search revealed a 2024 case in which a court found Amazon 100% responsible for all injuries in a crash.
So why does NYC need the Delivery Protection Act? Why does Mamdani want the act to pass?
Oh, that’s right! Mamdani is a socialist. He hates big business and wants Amazon out of New York City.
Amazon threatened to move its operations out of NYC if the act passes. If Amazon leaves, customers will face longer delivery wait times and higher costs.
Also, Amazon’s departure would affect over 40 delivery partners that employ over 5,000 people.
So the act would harm not only Amazon and its customers but also small businesses and their employees. From The New York Post:
Opponents of the bill planned to mount their own show of force Monday, with package delivery workers and small-business owners planning a 1 p.m. press conference in East Harlem to urge city leaders to reject the measure.
The New York Delivers coalition said its members will gather at Thomas Jefferson Park to argue that Intro 518 threatens thousands of delivery jobs and small businesses while raising costs for New Yorkers.
The coalition claims as many as 10,000 city delivery jobs could be at risk if the legislation passes, including an estimated 3,500 last-mile delivery jobs in Harlem and four adjoining Council districts.
How about minorities, Mamdani? Yeah: “New York Delivers also said 82% of the last-mile delivery workforce does not have a college degree, and 84% is non-white.”
If it looks like an Amazon delivery and drives like an Amazon delivery, then it's an Amazon delivery, right? Not according to Amazon.
Big companies like Amazon have built a vast network of subcontractors who deliver their packages while shielding them from accountability.
It… pic.twitter.com/6hQVV8GoNH
— Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@NYCMayor) August 10, 2026
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Comments
Socialists are the most ignorant people on earth. Mamdani has no idea how products get from the production stage to the consumer.
Not true. It is not that they are ignorant, it is that they DO NOT CARE.
These people are blinded by their hatred of free markets and the companies that operate within them.
Embrace the power of “AND”.
He, like all moronic socialists, will unironically force them to ‘pay drivers a living wage’, then act shocked when they just stop delivering.
And then Amazon will hand over deliveries to the USPS. They already do that for some deliveries. I see that here in NH as some of my Amazon orders are delivered by an ‘Amazon’ delivery driver and some by way of the USPS.
“Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.”
(n.b. that this quote comes to us from the OG fascist, not a socialist)
I’m just amazed at what socialists get so excited about. These drivers and Amazon entered into agreements. No one forced the drivers to agree and no one is forcing them to continue should they not want to.
What’s the big deal? Caveat emptor!
This is yet another example of why government should be neutered.
Especially governments led by Islamist extremists such as this clown.
“Especially governments led by Islamist extremists such as this clown.”
On 9/11 Islamist extremists killed 2,977 people in NYC in the deadliest terrorist attack in American history. Today Islamist extremists run the place.
In fact, just a couple of years after 9/11 muslims were so bold as to attempt to build a Ground Zero Mosque near the site of the World Trade Center as a trophy of their conquest.
The sad fact is that they are winning that conquest, even in places like Texas.
True, but… the OG fascist WAS a socialist.
Do not imagine that by tearing up my membership card in the Socialist Party you can forbid my socialist faith or prevent me from continuing to work for the cause of socialism and the revolution.
–BENITO MUSSOLINI
“These drivers and Amazon entered into agreements. No one forced the drivers to agree and no one is forcing them to continue should they not want to.”
The problem is that when the drivers get into accidents, Amazon has deep pockets but these giggers have nothing.
Amazon should just switch to the postal service and delivery services like UPS, charge NYC customers the true cost of shipping while disallowing free delivery to prime customers. The NYC residents played stupid games and its time for them to win stupid prizes.
Well said!!
9-11-2001 “Never forget”
11-4-2025 “Never learn”
Agreed. I can only hope they call Mamdani on his strong arm tactics and make his policies hurt consumers.
I’m actually against AMZN on this one and I hope NY punches them in the nose.
When the upstream entity has this much control and direction in “how” work gets done, it is not outsourced its co-employment. AMZN is screwing all of these drivers out of stock and benefits by shoving them into another category.
The “Outsourced” status of most contracts at large companies is all fake.
I know. I worked as one of the 3 reviewers of all outsourced contracts at MSFT. It was all fake. 90% of the contracts do not meet the standard. If you didn’t stamp it as outsourced, you were labeled as “hard to work with.” A woman who had been there a year longer had gotten a bottom level review as I came into the position for doing the job correctly. She switched to approving EVERYTHING.
Had I known what I know now, I would have sued the living hell out of them for intimidation and retaliation as they went after me for the same thing. I know that saying that and finding a lawyer to take on these giants are two different things, but a company and senior management retaliating against someone enforcing corporate policy is bad juju.
I’m still rather bitter about it and there is more bad stuff that was going down in concert with this (black people to the front of the hiring queue).
Anyway- In this case I’m cheering for New York to go after AMZN on Co-employment grounds. They aren’t smart enough to do this of course, but I hope the do. I also hope I get called to testify if MSFT ever gets sued for this (a second time).
Those drivers are not being screwed out of stock and benefits. They are not “entitled” to such benefits. They are free to apply to work for Amazon or some other company that offers such benefits. That Amazon utilizes third parties for delivery is an allowable and acceptable decision.
No it is NOT allowable. When they wear the amazon vest, the amazon hat and drive the amazon van with the amazon logo, use amazon’s entire delivery SW ecosystem for both HW and SW, and take very specific instructions from amazon, that is NOT an outsourced agreement.
It’s not even a shadow of the agreement FedEx has with their guys (which also has some shady aspects, just ask guys who get deployed and return).
An outsourced agreement is using FedEx, UPS, USPS where those vans are carrying packages from anyone. What amazon has done is create a class of EMPLOYEE and stripped away all the employee benefits. You actually have (or use to have) Amazon EMPLOYEES elsewhere doing the exact same job, doing the exact same vest- all of that- with benefits. These are all clear indicators of co-employment.
MSFT does the same crap with their XBOX division.
Big tech is NOT your friend. Especially not in labor laws.
Andy – you are correct that Amazon and many other companies push the boundaries that separate employees from contract workers. Certainly Microsoft should be well aware of the limits: it’s been 25 years since they lost the precedent-setting “Perma-Temp” case. That’s exactly why your job existed. However having a job as “Prophet of Doom” is thankless indeed (I held that role in a different context) because if you’re doing your job well the dragon you guard against never makes an appearance. It is inevitable that some supervisor at some level will yield to pressure and gut the process and no one in his (working career) lifetime has ever gotten bitten. So abuses will grow. Still, here’s the piece you’re missing. A lot of workers like these jobs because of the flexibility. I ask almost every Uber driver if they’re okay with their (very similar) working situation. The answer invariably is, “Yes.”
What you and Mandami propose kills an opportunity that a lot of people like; not only the corporation and the customer benefit. The better answer to police the boundary against the worst abuses. The city could make plenty of income in penalties and fines doing that rather than killing a functioning symbiotic relationship.
“They like the flexibility”
They don’t like the rates getting squeezed lower and lower every year. In the early 2000s it was a good gig to be a contractor. By 2012 the rates were squeezed supremely.
Those slave labor visas from India are part of this scheme. Tata, HCL and others were piping in foreigners as fast as possible. Some permanent, some rotate in and out.
Nope.
I mostly agree. However my agreement is limited to the use of what are IMO deceptive practices by Amazon. This isn’t a McDonalds where the customer comes into the business and folks may not realize this particular location is not company owned but a franchise.. Instead this is a delivery service to homes/offices. If Amazon wants to go 3rd party I have zero issues if they wanna hire Shady Bob’s delivery service. That’s fine but don’t put Shady Bob into an Amazon uniform, driving a vehicle selected by Amazon, painted/decked out to look like it is an Amazon owned truck. Let Shady Bob wear the uniform of his small business (if any), operate according to his policies (if any) driving whatever rusted out jalopy they have in their fleet.
Actually, what Amazon is doing makes a lot of sense. This way, the deliveries are more readily identified by the recipients as the products they were expecting. Also, with Amazon’s control over the details, more accurate tracking is maintained, and hopefully the manner in which the deliveries are made adhere to some set of standards.
“Amazon’s control over the details” – red flag on co-employment.
You as the consumer WANT it to be an Amazon employee.
You as the consumer WANT that employee to have those benefits.
You as the consumer WANT that employee to be held to a higher standard.
Employment laws exist for good reasons. If you aren’t going to draw the line here- go the route that trucking companies did with foreign nationals. That made sense for the companies using them. Not so much for the rest of us.
Great! Though Amazon could achieve the very same things by putting these drivers on their payroll as employees. To me the deception is a problem. If someone is expecting an Amazon delivery and someone shows up to the house in an Amazon marked vehicle wearing an Amazon ‘uniform’ that someone should be an employee of Amazon. If they work for Shady Bob’s last mile delivery they should be wearing/driving markings that directly ID the employer.
Frankly this is odd to me. I live in a rural area. Our last mile delivery is never from Amazon. The USPS, UPS and Fed Ex deliver the bulk of my Amazon orders. Occasionally we get a small local last mile delivery service but their vehicles and uniforms are not deceptively carrying false Amazon logos, instead they wear their small business name/logo.
Maybe I’m even more rural. Mine are most likely to come up the driveway in their own red Hondas, or occasionally a larger van with truck rental company logos.
Our USPS carriers are all ‘rural carriers’ who drive their own vehicles not cute little USPS trucks. There’s a local 3rd party ‘last mile’ delivery carrier who drive beat up extended vans which don’t hold up well on dirt roads and uneven surfaces, one managed to get himself high centered on my causeway between the ponds in front of my house which is part of the ‘driveway’ to reach the house. During busy Christmas season we get the rental trucks as well.
That would be the FedEx agreement.
This is not that.
Explain please. I really don’t know what you are attempting to say.
my understanding is that the fed ex drivers ARE their own bosses. Individually. They literally own a franchise agreement.
That info may be dated.
Where that went sideways was in the 2000s, many of these guys deployed- and when they came back… Fed Ex said foxtrot oscar to getting their route back.
There’s other perils to that as well. Similar model is with captive insurance agencies (State Farm). You own it, but you don’t.
However AMZN is doing nothing like this. They driving for the bottom of the labor cost barrel. As I noted in other comments… that fart smell coming your direction is wafting in from India and other third world hell holes.
On that we agree. Amazon and other shippers/delivery services don’t want to put these guys on their payroll. Some is to avoid wages/benefits, some is mitigate liability both legal liability and to redirect customer complaints ‘oh, that wasn’t our driver it was shifty Joe’s delivery dressed up like our guy so blame him not us’.
Inside of the contract that the third party signed is probable a clause that requires the third party to obtain insurance that will indemnify Amazon and pay their legal bills if a suit is filed against Amazon. This is for all claims, including Workers Compensation so that if one of their employees is injured on the job and comes against Amazon, the third party company pays for the claim. The contract also specifies the amount of insurance coverage that the third party has to have to have enough in coverage for most accidents. Sometimes the total cost is actually more than what Amazon would pay if they paid claims directly, however, what they are paying for is predictability they can use to develop their budgets.
The vans are leased. It’s not AMZNs problem what happens. All they have to do is make AMZN right for the dead van and dead packages. You are mamed for life, you can sue the living crap out of the card board cut out of a sub contractor who was between you and AMZN and they go bankrupt in a week… and the next one steps in.
See how that works?
See how this quickly goes to the path of illegals driving those vans in NY?
The recent SCOTUS ruling may pierce that. It basically held that shippers can’t ‘pass the buck’ of liability if they select the 3rd party delivery service. Previous precedent had created a near impossible bar to holding shippers accountable for their chosen delivery agents.
Hope so.
I woke up this morning to find that the commie mayor of NYC is lying! Run Amazon out of business in your city, Zohrani Jihadi-Dani, if you don’t get your way. That’ll show them who’s boss!
Not a big supporter of Amazon, but I’d rather see Amazon leave NYC than support anything commie Mamdani does.
Mamdani just wants to date AOC.
Or his wife does. He has SIMP written all over his smug face.
“Amazon threatened to move its operations out of NYC if the act passes.”
Don’t wait for it to pass. Just do it. Even if they don’t pass it NYC and the state will find something else to make trouble with.
Let the people of NYC deal with everything being delivered by USPS, UPS, and FedEx.
RE: Mamdani said in a statement. “As last-mile delivery centers have exploded across New York, so too have traffic accidents and worker injuries.”
How will changing the ownership of the flowchart reduce accidents and injuries?
It makes more sense to me to change the conduct by laws that will reduce the unwelcomed incidents.