New York City Councilmember Tiffany Caban calls the Delivery Protection Act—a bill that is awaiting a vote by the full City Council—“the most important municipal labor bill in the country.” If passed, the legislation will make New York City the first locality in the United States to require corporations like Amazon to directly employ every warehouse worker, driver, or delivery person who distributes packages to consumers. It will also require every “last mile distributor”—providers that manage the final delivery step from a distribution center to the destination—to be licensed by the city.
Caban, speaking at a Democratic Socialist Of America kick-off rally in late July, said that she believes that the Delivery Protection Act will not only have precedent-setting benefits for e-commerce workers nationwide, but will make the industry more responsive to workers more generally.
Currently, corporations and companies like Amazon, FedEx, DHL, Fresh Direct, and DoorDash subcontract their delivery operations to companies known as Delivery Service Providers, or DSPs. In New York City alone, Amazon relies on more than 5,000 workers employed by forty different DSPs.
“These are people who are wearing Amazon vests, driving Amazon vans, and delivering Amazon packages, but when a worker is injured, not allowed to take legally-required rest breaks, or gets into an accident, Amazon wipes its hands, says, ‘These are not our workers,’ ” Matan Arad-Neeman, communications director for Caban, tells The Progressive. “First and foremost, we see this as a public safety bill that will benefit communities and drivers.”
This finding was boosted by a 2025 report compiled by then-New York City Comptroller Brad Lander that found that in 2024, Amazon and other companies delivered 2.5 million packages a day to residents of the city’s five boroughs, up from 1.1 million a day in 2017. The result, the report says, is “increased truck traffic and crashes, congestion, and air quality problems, particularly in communities designated as environmental justice priority areas.” Nationwide, the delivery numbers are even more staggering: 22.4 billion packages per year, or 61.3 million a day, are being delivered to U.S. households.
For Delivery Protection Act supporters, these figures underscore the urgency of passing the bill, and a wide coalition—including the Teamsters, the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice, as well as health and safety advocates and concerned community residents—are pushing for its passage. For too long, they say, Amazon and other corporations have gotten away with using DSPs to avoid liability, as well as derail growing unionization efforts in Amazon and DSP facilities across the country.
Queens resident Latrice Johnson delivered packages through an Amazon subcontractor for two years, until she became one of the more than 100 unionized drivers who were laid off in August 2025.
She says she was terminated shortly after she joined an organizing campaign at an Amazon warehouse in Maspeth, Queens. Johnson, who now works part-time as a Teamsters organizer, considers the firing retaliatory. “At first, the job [driving for Amazon] seemed like a good fit for me,” Johnson tells The Progressive. “I could work ten hours a day, four days a week, and, as a single mother, I liked that I could switch my schedule whenever I needed to.” But after a while, she says she began to see the downside of company operations.
“Workers like me rarely had a hand truck to make it easier to load the vans,” she says, “and we often had to drive vehicles that were dirty or had mechanical problems—including a loose steering wheel and bad brakes—that put safety at risk. I wanted better working conditions. But as soon as I started to support the unionization effort, and as soon as I joined the union, I was called out. Managers spoke against the union, told us that the union would be bad for us, that it would just take our money. Some of my coworkers had people from management do ‘ride-alongs,’ accompanying them in the truck and speaking against the union while they were out delivering packages to customers.”
Since her dismissal, Johnson says she has seen anti-union rhetoric and the posting of anti-union flyers—and now anti-Delivery Protection Act sentiments—ramp up in the Amazon warehouses where DSP workers load their vans. “Workers are scared to unionize, but I remind them that we have to speak up,” she says. “We have to stay dedicated to the fight if we want things to improve.”
Still, Johnson knows that Amazon is a hard-fighting and deep-pocketed adversary. As of late July, the company had contributed more than $5 million to the Five Borough Jobs Campaign and a campaign offshoot called New York Delivers, which includes more than thirty industry groups and Chambers of Commerce. The groups are united in opposition to the Delivery Protection Act and the unionization of warehouses and delivery hubs throughout the city.
Zach Miller, Vice President of Government Affairs at the Trucking Association of New York, tells The Progressive that the association joined New York Delivers because it believes the Delivery Protection Act is misguided. “Amazon’s expertise is not in delivery,” he says, “so it makes sense for them to partner with companies that specialize in delivery and let localized companies do that work. Consumers know how to order stuff and pick it up. But getting goods from point A to point B is complicated and trucking companies know how to do it efficiently and quickly.”
Kris Basmagy, co-founder of DashWave Delivery, a three-year-old company that employs more than 150 delivery people, also opposes the Delivery Protection Act. While the company employs a small number of drivers, he says that the majority of DashWave staff bring packages to their Manhattan destinations on foot. Basmagy believes the Delivery Protection Act will upend this arrangement, will require DSPs to fire its delivery workers, and will then force these workers to go through a cumbersome hiring process at Amazon and other companies. “We are not opposed to better worker protections,” he says, “but the city should not undermine last mile logistics systems that work.”
Caban and her staff disagree. “Amazon could quickly hire every DSP manager with expertise to oversee the delivery system,” Arad-Neeman says. “Amazon says that it is opposed to the act because it wants to support small, often minority-owned or veteran-owned businesses. But the trucks operate out of Amazon warehouses and some of these DSPs have only one client: Amazon. They can and should employ them directly.”
The Delivery Protection Act is currently going through an amendment process in the City Council, and Caban’s office is soliciting input from delivery and warehouse workers, unions, safety experts, and DSP owners to ensure that the revised bill is as strong, clear, and enforceable as possible. More than thirty out of fifty-one City Council members are currently signed on as cosponsors.
Once the legislation is redrafted, it will go to the Council Committee on Consumer and Worker Protections. It will then head to the full body for a vote sometime this fall.
“Other cities, including Chicago, are talking about this bill, which is why Amazon is so hellbent on stopping it,” Arad-Neeman adds.“The $5 million they’ve already spent to stop the act would be much better spent on enhancing worker protections, increasing wages, improving its vans, and treating its workforce fairly and respectfully.”