New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani has fired a new salvo in his push to take on big business on behalf of low-paid workers, backing a bill that would force Amazon, FedEx and other companies to employ delivery workers instead of using subcontractors.
The bill, introduced earlier this year in the New York City Council, would require warehouse operators to obtain licenses from the city. To receive a license, operators would have to adhere to new safety, training and employment requirements, including hiring thousands of the city's contract couriers.
The mayor's backing now blows open a political battle that's been bubbling for months since the bill's introduction. It concerns one of the most challenging parts of the delivery business in a city whose residents rely on meals and packages regularly appearing on their doorsteps: the "last mile," or the final stretch between a warehouse and a customer's home.
Mamdani, who threw his weight behind the bill Monday, said it would also help reduce traffic accidents. He cited a 2025 report from the New York City Comptroller, which found injury-causing crashes rose in 78% of neighborhoods after last-mile facilities opened nearby.
"Corporations like Amazon build billion-dollar business models by insulating themselves from accountability through a system of exploitative subcontracting," the mayor said in a statement.
Amazon said it would consider relocating its warehouses outside of New York City if the Delivery Protection Act passed and warned the measure could put the jobs of more than 5,000 delivery workers employed by its subcontractors at risk.
The company has also said in testimony that it has invested billions of dollars in safety programs since 2019. "We're committed to creating good jobs, supporting our thousands of employees and local small business partners in New York City, and providing fast, affordable delivery in a safe working environment," the company said.
That delivery model -- which relies on contracting smaller firms that hire, train and manage fleets of workers -- has also paved a path to business ownership for operators, Amazon noted.
If the bill passes, New York could become the first city to require last-mile operators to make delivery workers direct employees. It isn't the first local or state government to try it. The New York City bill is one of several efforts by cities and states to rein in a broader trend toward outsourcing work to contractors, freelancers and gig workers.
In 2019, California lawmakers passed a law that would have required Uber, Lyft and other app-based work platforms to classify their drivers as employees rather than independent contractors. The platforms then spent millions on a successful voter referendum to preserve their independent-contractor model, though they made some concessions to improve working conditions and pay for drivers.
And last week, New Jersey sued Amazon, alleging the e-commerce giant illegally used its dominance over its package-delivery network to suppress wages and working conditions for thousands of delivery drivers while preventing them from organizing. Amazon said the complaint "is not grounded in fact."
The last mile is typically the most expensive part of the e-commerce fulfillment process, because carrying one or two packages to individual addresses is so labor-intensive and time-intensive.
To help lower those costs, FedEx widely uses an independent-contractor model in which it contracts with a business to cover routes in a geographic area. The contractor buys its own trucks and hires its own drivers to make the deliveries. Amazon has built a similar final-mile delivery model in which the contractors also hire drivers but lease instead of own the delivery vehicles.
Though the drivers aren't direct employees of FedEx and Amazon, they often wear branded uniforms or vests and drive corporate-branded vans or trucks. They are also subject to safety rules set by the companies. But the contractor model has also made unionization efforts among drivers more difficult.
United Parcel Service's delivery drivers, on the other hand, are direct employees of UPS and members of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. The company's share price has declined since it struck a five-year labor agreement with the union in 2023 that locked in pay raises.
A large body of research has shown that when companies stop employing their own workers for tasks and instead push those jobs out to smaller firms or to freelancers, wages and other job protections tend to decline.
The New York bill "is very innovative," said Paul Osterman, a professor emeritus at MIT and the author of "Disposable Workers," a new book on the transformation of employment. His own surveys of work arrangements indicate about 12% of U.S. workers are contractors employed by intermediaries.
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