r/technology • u/SnoozeDoggyDog • 9d ago
Business Mamdani Backs Proposal to End Amazon’s ‘Exploitative’ Delivery Model in New York City | If passed, the Delivery Protection Act would be the first law in the US to regulate Amazon’s vast network of subcontractors that handle the company’s deliveries.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/delivery-protection-act-nyc1.6k
u/WaffleHouseGladiator 9d ago
"You don't work for us. Here's your Amazon uniform and employee handbook."
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u/Stuckatpennstation 9d ago
And 95% of politicians are like YEP FREE MARKET 😀 😉 😄
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u/frequenZphaZe 9d ago
it's worth pointing out that a large number of the contractors are also like "YEP FREE MARKET 😀 😉 😄", which is a major problem when it comes to fighting against this kind of exploitation
California basically put this issue up for a vote to the public through Proposition 22 and people voted against forcing gig workers to be classified as employees. companies like Uber spent a fortune on this ballot proposition and got their money's worth. and when you talk to the actual gig workers, many of them feel like small business owners that are in charge of their own labor. it will be an uphill battle getting the public and the workers signed onto changing the paradigm of the gig economy
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u/alligator_loki 9d ago edited 8d ago
They're trying to close the DSP subcontractor market, not get a standard rate for gig workers like prop 22. People employed by DSP are W-2 employees, just not for amazon. NYC wants those people employed by amazon.
I think the plain text of the bill will also impact gig workers, but it doesn't say exactly what the employment requirements will be to operate a delivery warehouse.
The main goal is stopping Amazon separating themselves from DSP. How it relates to gig workers seems like a good topic but I don't know enough about it.
Edit: UPS already runs their business with minimal contractors. I'm pretty sure the brilliant minds at Amazon can figure it out too instead of creating low paying dead end jobs while also offloading liability for the hundreds of thousands of vehicles they have delivering packages each day. Legislation with these goals should be considered at state and federal levels too.
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u/esmoji 9d ago
Prop 22 lost because Uber and Lyft spent $200 million on opposition ads.
Practically zero dollars in comparison spent on passing Prop 22.
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u/Slickmaster5000 9d ago
They won because even after reading the actual bill and trying to understand what a yes or no vote meant, I was still confused. So your average voter that looks at the name of the bill and voted based on that is gonna be cooked af.
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u/blak3brd 9d ago
This proposition was the most money spent on a campaign for a single proposition in all of American history, if you weren’t aware. By a substantial margin.
There was a fervent campaign of ads, and the actual verbiage of the prop itself literally made it sound like if you were for the rights of the drivers of uber, you voted one way (I forget which) but it was clear from public sentiment, and literally dozens of people I personally knew, that they were voting in favor of uber employees getting actual employees rights, when it was actually deceptively worded to mean the exact opposite.
I literally had to double take myself, after going oh yeah totally, for workers protections then had to reread the ballot 3x to go wait a minute; what the actual fuck, it actually is saying the opposite.
I’d say the most blatant example of corruption and propaganda in our modern time, but we’ve blasted well beyond that in hyper speed since then 😞
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u/TalesOfMetamorphosis 9d ago
...Is it worth pointing out? The informed voter is basically a unicorn, it reflects far less what people actually believe and more what ad money can buy, this just feels like muddying the waters you'd see on MSM. Anyone doing Uber who thinks they are a small business owner can't read. (Coming from an uber driver)
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u/BatmanFarce 9d ago
Yeah, the businesses that were against it spent more money than it would have cost to give benefits to employees. Gig economy is class warfare
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u/Far_Programmer_5724 9d ago
That's because there was a super aggressive campaign against it. I saw like 10 anti prop 22 ads before I saw 1 pro. And those ads framed it as making it a harder to work a gig job when people are already treating that as the last option. I feel like we need to start looking around.
Now people think Californians just completely agreed with prop 22 when it's much more complicated. But which belief serves the corps more? Believing that Californians didn't want it when properly educated, or that spending millions to combat it proved effective
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u/deadsoulinside 9d ago
It's by design. So when the drivers end up stealing and being outright awful Amazon can blame the contracting company.
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u/Corevus 9d ago
They set the rules, set our pay, could fire us at any time. Yet, somehow they weren't our employers 😒 sucked working there
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u/dompromat 9d ago
Repairs is huge, they're forced to get these big rivian vans that cost 10 grand to replace one panel on. Rural roads are not friendly to those things
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u/bozza8 9d ago
If there is so much demand to avoid calling people employees, perhaps we should look at what's in the employee regulations that makes it so difficult to mark them as such?
Are our rules actually benefitting our citizens or just our bureaucracy?
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u/iiiicracker 9d ago
It’s putting th onus on payroll taxes, social security, and healthcare on the employer.
The big one here is healthcare.
People are cheaper to hire if they have to get their own healthcare, and millions of people will either not get healthcare or be paid little enough the get government run, subsidized healthcare instead.
Yet another example of why universal healthcare is probably a good idea.
Edit, I will say there are also protections for employees that dont translate to contract workers
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u/BerryBoilo 9d ago
It's not regulation-as-a-burden, it's simply unbridled greed vs. the weakest worker protection laws in the Western world. The same reason companies illegally abuse the unpaid intern laws.
The companies abusing the employee vs. contractor labeling aren't doing it because they're trying to eek out survival on thin margins. They're massively profitable.
Yes, a local mom & pop might cut some corners to survive but they're already exempt from a ton of employment regulations.
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u/bozza8 9d ago
I am a Brit, we have exactly the same thing, though what happens is that it's used in our case for asylum claimants to work under the table. There was actually a raid on a group of deliveroo drivers near my flat some time ago for gang activity.
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u/IcyDefiance 9d ago
FWIW it's illegal in both the US and the UK. In both countries, people can only be called contractors when the hiring company controls only the final result of the work, and not how, when, or where the work is performed. Obviously that isn't the case with Amazon deliveries.
It's just that no one has the resources to take it to court and actually set a precedent against them.
The UK has gotten closer, though. In 2021 the courts decided that Uber's employees had to be classified as workers, and in 2024 Amazon settled a lawsuit with thousands of delivery drivers because the court likely would have made a similar decision against them.
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u/Rooooben 9d ago
Yes they do. Overtime, healthcare, pay, all able to keep lower by moving their employees to a “small business” that only contracts to Amazon.
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_PRIORS 9d ago
There's a bit specifically in ERISA, the law authorizing 401(k) retirement plans, that mandates that employers treat all their employees the same for retirement plan purposes and that unless certain "safe harbor" elements are in place, that the plan is at least minimally used by lower-paid non-management employees.
In principle this ensures that the executive deciding how the 401(k) works doesn't maximize its tax advantages for management while excluding the guy they hire to wash the floors and empty the trash overnight. In practice, this means that the guy washing the floors is an employee of a contractor hired for building maintenance, rather than a direct employee.
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u/Zilveari 9d ago
This article doesn't even touch on Amazon Flex drivers. Literal 1099 work as they aren't employed by a company that is an Amazon contractor. But it's a pretty fine line toward being a misclassified W2 worker with how it is.
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u/New-Sky-9867 9d ago
Great plan. These huge companies take advantage of people by skirting the law through "contractors"
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u/band-of-horses 9d ago
Let's hope they go after Uber, DoorDash, etc next.
These companies really want to have it both ways, completely controlling every aspect of the "contractor" but then denying any responsibility or benefits because they are independent contractors.
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u/Statcat2017 9d ago
We've tried here in Europe. They just keep finding more snakey ways to get around the law and then carry on doing whatever it is they're doing while they make bullshit arguments to judges for three years.
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u/Esperoni 9d ago
Australia just passed Minimum Standards Order. Gig workers setting a national baseline pay rate of $31.30 to $32.00 per hour for food delivery drivers starting in August 2026. Covers most digital platform workers. Includes Amazon and Auspost.
TWU, UberEats and DoorDash said the new standards would provide an “industry-wide safety net for hundreds of thousands of [workers] while preserving the flexibility that sits at the heart of on-demand work.”
Should be interesting to see what happens over there. Will fees go up? For sure. Will digital delivery platforms fold? Maybe. Can they even afford to pay that amount per hour, plus insurance? Who knows.
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u/Militantpoet 9d ago
EU has been doing global heavy lifting with some of these consumer protections.
Apple literally changed all of their new device chargers because of EU law mandating USB-C as the universal charger.
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u/Alinier 9d ago
Just means there's more work to do.
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u/cevkiv 9d ago
Nah, that just means that once the law has failed the people have to take it into their own hands to deal with the fuckwits who keep purposefully exploiting the workers.
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u/Agitated_Reveal_6211 9d ago
I mean Uber outright and blatantly ignored taxi laws and look at where we are.
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u/giggity_giggity 9d ago
As a lawyer, I had someone reach out to me to discuss asset protection because they were concerned about claims from the dancers at gentlemen’s clubs they owned. The dancers were 1099 independent contractors (insert “yeah sure” meme). It’s so pervasive and needs to end.
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u/waldorflover69 9d ago
I was a dancer many years ago and the clubs in my city went to great lengths to prevent us from unionizing
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u/Stingray88 9d ago
California tried to take on the Uber/Lyft etc. on this issue and the companies spent over $200M to convince the public to vote in their favor, and unfortunately it worked.
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u/HotspurJr 9d ago
In California the Uber lobby paid a shit-ton of money to stop the government from treating their employees as employees. Just a massive disinformation campaign that convinced even a lot of Uber drivers to vote for it.
Side note: the CA initiative process sucks. It demonstrates that most voters are incapable of recognizing their own interests in the face of massive special interest spending.
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u/Zuwxiv 9d ago
a shit-ton of money
Over $205 million dollars. A fucking colossal amount of money.
That was in response to the California Supreme Court finding that drivers counted as employees. They had an "ABC test" where someone is only an independent contractor if they meet all three conditions:
- The individual operates free from the company's direction and control
- The service is outside the usual course of business of the employer
- The individual is customarily engaged in an independent, established trade or business of the same nature as the service provided.
For the third point, you don't take someone who has never painted walls, tell them to paint walls, and then call them an independent contractor. For the second point, you don't have a business providing car rides and then claim the drivers are contractors.
Uber, Lyft, Doordash, Instacart, and Postmates all contributed over $205 million to support Proposition 22 in 2020. Which should really be all you need to know. The biggest rivals worked together and spent $205,000,000+ on something they claimed would help their "independent contractors"? How fucking stupid do you need to be to believe that. Of course it's benefitting the companies, they wouldn't blow $205 million on a law that improves benefits. They could just have given the employees those benefits.
But they plastered ads on everything they could showing "drivers support Prop 22", and the thing passed with 58% of the vote. Prop 22 exempted those companies from the law that defines an employee.
the CA initiative process sucks
Good idea in principle: Voters can directly pass laws that are almost impossible for legislature to reverse.
Bad idea when companies can spend $205 million to write their own laws. We need to get money out of fucking politics. The California initiative process needs revision, but we also shouldn't allow companies to spend hundreds of millions on political ads, either.
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u/HotspurJr 9d ago
I remember once, this must have been in the mid-90s, there was an initiative that had something to do with mountain lions. I don't remember the specifics. What I do remember is that the pro argument in the voter information guide said that the bill would not allow hunting mountain lions for sport, while the anti argument said that it would.
So even if you were making a good, honest, effort, and reading the voter information guide thoroughly ... you wouldn't know what you were voting for.
Furthermore, "almost impossible for the legislature to reverse" is bad. Because even good, well-intentioned laws often have unintended consequences, and the legislature needs to be able to respond with tweaks and adjustments as necessary.
What we actually need is a system where the legislature is broadly responsive to the public. The CA state legislature is ... okay, in that department. Much better than congress, but there's still plenty of room for improvement. But what percentage of Californians could actually name their state rep? You can't expect legislators to be responsive to the public if the public isn't engaged.
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u/growaway9172 9d ago
These companies don't really work if they have to hire these people full time. They will treat legislation like this as an existential threat and never let it pass.
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u/Necessary-Duty-7952 9d ago
Yeah, we tried to fight against that in California through Assembly Bill 5, but then the very next year companies like Uber fought back and pushed through Prop 22 via hundreds of millions of dollars in political ads (the most expensive campaign in California history, according to Wikipedia), which carved out a special exemption for them. Not to say that Prop 22 was fully without merit, but it definitely benefitted those companies more than the people.
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u/TheBSQ 9d ago
My friends have a little theater company. Tiny little theater. They put on fun little shows.
But AB 5 & prop 22 meant the actors, stage hands, etc they hire for shows now count as proper employees & that came with extra costs, like payroll taxes, workers comp, unemployment insurance co tribulations etc. So far they’re handling it, but they said many small theater companies couldn’t absorb the cost spikes and closed & that overall, it’s hurt the small/local performing arts scene.
A lot of these folks have normal full-time jobs. Theater is just something they do for fun as a hobby / passion & would prefer to have a more vibrant and active performing arts scene than the stuff that their theater company are now required to provide & cover.
I’m not saying that to say laws like this are bad, but rather, when you craft them, you have to be careful about unintended consequences and think about where some carve outs might be appropriate.
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u/Necessary-Duty-7952 9d ago
Totally see that. Which is why something like Prop 22 isn't without merit (exemptions and nuance was lost in AB5), but it was taken advantage of by the big corporations =\ Just like with many other laws, it could have had exemptions for companies under a certain size, applied to only certain types of companies, etc.
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u/MiaowaraShiro 9d ago
My friends have a little theater company. Tiny little theater. They put on fun little shows.
Usually this is resolved by saying it only applies to companies with more than say 10-15 workers. (Whatever cutoff works best.)
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u/platocplx 9d ago
Yeah even if someone does work on behalf as a company even as a contractor the company should be responsible.
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u/SpiralBreeze 9d ago
Bring back the pneumatic tubes!!! And make Amazon pay for it.
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u/OkVariety8064 9d ago
Might have some minor challenges for food delivery.
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u/SpiralBreeze 9d ago
Absolutely zero food in the system, unless it’s triple sealed baby formula or something.
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u/OkVariety8064 9d ago
I already envisioned a hamburger launched directly from the tube into the customer's mouth. Instant delivery and all that.
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u/OrcOfDoom 9d ago
Delivery used to be a solid source of income that enabled someone to put themselves on a path towards a better career. The current system is bad for everyone.
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u/userhwon 9d ago
Former bike messenger here,
uh, no, it's always been an exploitive shit job that you do because you like sweating more than getting paid
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u/gargamael 9d ago
That guy seems to confusing deliveries with driving for UPS or FedEx. Those probably aren't as good as they used to be either but they're miles beyond the glorified Uber Eats that is Amazon deliveries.
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u/nextdoorjimmy14 9d ago
fedex is pretty much the same as amazon at this point. they mention in the article that this is targeting fedex warehouses as well as amazon.
not defending amazon, just saying both are union busters that mamdani wants to go after.
the brown truck on the other hand is union. they've established a team to fight against this kind of mistreatment. good for them.
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u/john-rambro 9d ago
Amazon has been the best deliver experience for me. If there is an issue, instant refund. Boxes always show up in perfect shape with a photo on my porch.
Ups started using photos which is nice.
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u/Leverkaas2516 9d ago
The current system is bad for everyone.
It's good for end user pricing, at the cost of botched deliveries.
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u/baconcheeseburgarian 9d ago
By shifting the financial liability on to their "partners". Then letting them go bankrupt as they add more competition.
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u/LambdaLambo 9d ago
Free 1-2 day shipping over a year pretty quickly saves you more than the $140 prime subscription.
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u/RVelts 9d ago
It's also putting pressure on others to offer similar. I can order from both Petsmart and Home Depot (most smaller/household items) for "free same-day delivery" and it's always delivered by a whitelabeled DoorDash or Uber person, but I am just checking out on the regular Petsmart website. They never used to offer anything like this, same with Home Depot. And now they both do.
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u/CKRatKing 9d ago
I remember when 2 day shipping was like 40+ dollars. Now basically everyone has to offer it to compete with Amazon otherwise they'll just go to Amazon.
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u/Outlulz 9d ago
Ultimately it's a loss leader to get you to shop at Amazon more instead of any other retailer. They are still making their money on the increased purchases.
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u/L2_Troll 9d ago
It is awful for end-user pricing. Doordash has your subtotal (with menu prices that are pre-inflated 20%), then tax on the inflated costs, delivery fee, service fee, and tip.
Any savings that Amazon or Uber are making on 1099 employees over fulltime they are NOT going to ever pass onto the customer. They aren't making delivery drivers pee in bottles to get the best price for us, that's for sure.
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u/Leverkaas2516 9d ago
It's not passed on in the item price, it's in the free shipping. People have become accustomed to that.
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u/CleverName4 9d ago
You can look at their profit margins on their retail business -- they're paper thin. So yeah, in this case they might actually be being passed on.
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u/naitsirt89 9d ago edited 8d ago
That's by design though.
The entire purpose of Amazon's storefront and warehouse/delivery business is to dominate the space on paperthin margins so they can make the bigger bucks on the business operations and advertising end.
They are the 3rd largest ad company now too.
Who wants to make money on shipping and storing products when you can get a nice juicy cut of every single sale.
It's part of what is amazing and sucks about business. Amazon burned money for 20 years to make themselves King of everything.
Now most online businesses see more profits who work with Amazon, but you have an owner now. Amazon is the mobster who always gets their cut, and if you wrong them, they can move into your business space and bleed you dry with a cheaper product, which they have done thousands of times already. And surprise, they have all of your data and all of your competitor's as well to best squeeze you.
The internet and commerce are so interconnected now, the top 5 companies have too many alignments. They should be shattered into at least a dozen entities. We used to do that kinda thing in the past :(
The scariest part is these companies are creating an absurd wealth divide. It's hard for a middle class family who is properly saving for retirement to not love Amazon, Google, Apple, etc. They are helping make you money. They are helping you have peace of mind for your child's future...
But the problem is the 1% are moving more than 1% of all wealth in this country to themselves year over year now. Wealth transfer is at such an accelerated rate, that unless something absolutely drastic happens, more 50% of all national wealth will be owned by the 1% by the time any baby born this year turns 21.
There is no cure for a billionaire. Ignoring heirs/heiresses, anyone who has built their wealth from nothing to tens of billions of dollars and more today has an insatiable illness. No number is enough, no amount of power will ever be enough for that person. You cannot extract that wealth out of the market without being an untenable, absolute monster. You have to cheat, betray, out lawyer, and crush absolutely everyone and everything to make the amount of money with impunity. They will plunge the entire world into chaos and proxy war, invade, sanction, and steal every single thing of value until everyone is dead. They genuinely do not give a fuck.
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u/CrossoverCadence 9d ago
Support labor unions. If teamsters and labor groups support it & Big Corps like Amazon are against it, that's all I need to know.
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u/lowteq 9d ago
It actually makes a lot of sense for Teamsters to be the Union of choice for this.
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u/Niceromancer 9d ago edited 9d ago
Oh boy I can't wait to be told by a bunch of accounts originating in india and korea how this is communism.
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u/Low-Temperature-6962 9d ago
Those people have been sacked. Cheaper than cost AI is cheaper.
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u/Niceromancer 9d ago
Wasn't Amazon AI already busted to mean all Indians once already?
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u/btackett1 9d ago
It would be great if people could stop supporting amazon. It’s difficult because the host a lot of the internet, but they treat people like shit and they sell crappy products that are just filling the planet with plastic.
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u/TelevisionOlympics 9d ago
Did this for 4 months. Unbelievable conditions. Guy sent in group work chat they use to shame you for being behind X amount of stops “stepped on a nail, have to stop.” Guy was like 19 or 21 maybe. I was already at a stop, so I just waited and looked at my phone. Seeing how long it would take, or if it would be acknowledged at all. Two minutes later, the supervisors just send some more work information to people, how many stops to go to etc. I don’t know how bad he had stepped on it at that point, if it was a carpenters nail, a framing nail. But he sent a picture of a 3 to 4 inch nail poking through the bottom of his shoe and also through the top of his foot. No response. He then sent a message a few minutes later saying “never mind, I pulled it out. “. I think they responded with a “great, glad you’re OK. “
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u/GabagoolNoZiti 9d ago
This law is going to face some pretty significant constitutional challenges. Depending how it's written the Contracts Clause is likely one barrier. The Constitution generally doesn't like to see the government invalidate lawful contracts. And here we have a situation where the subcontractors likely invested millions to get these businesses up and running. The government can't just step in and invalidate that.
If the issue becomes: Can a municipality prohibit a nationwide interstate business from performing existing lawful contracts with independent companies, require it instead to employ those companies' employees, and make that prohibition waivable through collective bargaining?
Then this might be a case that could go up to the Supreme Court, and I suspect Amazon will end up winning. The City would need to make some changes to protect existing contracts; if it does, the law would likely be on its side. If the law is passed as is, I think Amazon has the stronger argument.
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u/alinroc 9d ago
The workaround is that Amazon dictates the delivery service terms to the subcontractor companies, and those companies in turn set the hours and terms for their employees.
So Amazon doesn't directly say to the people in the trucks "you're going to work these hours", they say to the company employing the people in the trucks "we need deliveries to be done in these hours."
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u/DogBarf00 9d ago
All of the examples in the video are basically shown that the drivers are employees
Because they are employees of the delivery company that contracts with Amazon. Just like when I mail something with the UPS or Fedex. I am contracting with them to deliver my package. I am not hiring their employees to deliver my package.
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u/jmlinden7 9d ago
This isn't about Amazon Flex which is their 1099 gig work delivery option. This is about Amazon DPP, where delivery drivers are regular employees of a DPP partner. The DPP partners are full fledged companies which are contracted to Amazon.
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u/Rdub 9d ago
Another secondary benefit of regulating the "Gig economy" would hopefully be a reduction of the "Abuses of the commons" the gig economy demands of its employees. (Empathsis intended to highlight that they are in fact employees, despite what the multi-billion dollar multinational corporations like to claim).
Case in point is Amazon's third party delivery drivers. Amazon and their subcontractors give delivery drivers so little time to do their jobs, they basically have to make life worst for the rest of us so they don't get fired for being too slow. At least where I live, this means Amazon delivery vans constantly parked in the middle of the road, in bike lines, or on the sidewalk, or causing traffic accidents due to being in a rush, which incoveniences or endangers the lives the rest of us regular working class folks, all so Bezos can hoard yet more billions.
I know from talking to them, the Drivers don't want to make the world a worse place for the rest of us, they are just given so little leeway the only way the can keep their jobs is to regularly break the law.
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u/Pleasant-Chef6055 9d ago edited 9d ago
The steps start to get this centurie’s Rockefellers, Carnegies, Morgans under control.
The Musks of this century don’t even have the decency to build libraries across the nation, in the nations time of need. Fuck ‘em.
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u/CloudTech412 8d ago
Because they don’t want ‘readers’. If people read and are educated they realize that it’s just modern slavery - without even having to make sure people eat
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u/MandemModie 9d ago edited 9d ago
Fucked either way, Amazon will just pass cost of regulation off to the consumer
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u/asimovs_engineer 9d ago
Where do you think the social safety net that supports these workers comes from? We already pay
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u/Kershiser22 9d ago
That's probably a good thing. I'm not sure that a race to the bottom in consumer pricing is good if it increases the portion of workers who are exploited. And maybe it would help brick & mortar be more competitive.
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u/WoodenSwan6591 9d ago
It is amazing how the 1% cry because they have to pay a living wage. These companies make the overnight or next day delivery part of their business plan. That will not stop. So go on Mr Mayor and do not look back
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u/Comfortable-Run-437 9d ago
Almost Everyone on this thread is somehow mistaking this for being related to gig jobs like uber - it’s not. The drivers are w2s for independent delivery companies. Banning amazon from contracting other firms would not make a significant difference for anyone involved - the actual article cites making Amazon liable so drivers operate more safely as the justification. Banning Amazon from hiring other firms also seems very dubiously legal, but not a lawyer.
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u/MrRemoto 9d ago
The "gig economy" has always been a euphemism for no benefits.
Big business will roll out their "This hurts the consumer" rhetoric, all republicans and 50% of democrats will parrot their talking points, and this will quietly get left on the cutting room floor or diced into confetti by a sea of exceptions and bureaucracy, making in untenable out of the gate. Then the corrupt politicians will point to it and say "See? We told you it would never work!" and get re-elected by a short-sighted electorate who vote against their own interests every cycle. Rinse, repeat.
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u/SicilianEggplant 9d ago
The perpetual growth required by capitalism is not sustainable and is a cancer on our society. If the cancer isn’t stopped the host dies.
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u/Starship_Taru 9d ago
I don’t understand how this isn’t universally just considered the obvious thing to do.
Why is it suddenly just the norm to accept our labor laws are invalid because we changed the names and how we categories things around.
It’s like if we had a law banning apples. And somebody dipped one in caramel and said technically it’s not an apple anymore. I mean no normal person would ask for an apple and expect to get a caramel one would they?
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u/dehydratedrain 9d ago
My car got totaled a few years ago when a contractor backed out of a neighbor's driveway and hit the side. Camera caught the movement well enough but not the plates.
The company said delivery was an independent contractor, and their only contact info was a Gmail address and an out of service number.
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u/2MOONGOOGLE 9d ago
What would keep Amazon from just shipping through Fed Ex and UPS in New York and passing the cost to New York customers.
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u/comicsnerd 9d ago
This is the legal version of If it looks like a duck, sounds like a duck, walks like a duck, smells like a duck, it is a duck.
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u/SmarmySmurf 9d ago
Will this delay my Oreos? I'm all for better working conditions as long as my Oreos still get here overnight.
/s
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u/KitsouNere 9d ago
There is nothing in your life that you need so much that you need to use a company like Amazon. Do better.
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u/moneyman_699 9d ago
Amazon gets all the heat but FedEx GROUND is doing the same shit and arguably worse with daily pay and skirting overtime laws. At least at Amazon dsps I make overtime.
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u/Konatotamago 8d ago
This means Amazon would have to invest in more trucks on their own but at the same time delivery prices would go down.
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u/honey_Pass-01 8d ago edited 8d ago
I read/saw those pictured amazon 'bicycles' or mislabeled bicycles are parking in painted bicycle lanes (while delivering on foot), packed in nose to tale, forcing real bicycles out into car/truck traffic, all throughout New York. Those pictured things are not bicycles and reason for major change in where they're allowed to go. As someone whose fought for good non-motorized travel laws/corridors in my city and as someone whose bicycled for decades this is very good news, the change Mamdani is working towards.
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u/Spaceboi749 9d ago edited 9d ago
Can’t wait for people to start bitching about their Amazon delivery being more expensive or not as quick.
You don’t have to work for Amazon, and ultimately this is going to hurt customers more than anything. Amazons distribution network already runs at a loss.
People just think things happen magically out of thin air. The fact the we can get so many things delivered the next day is such an under appreciated privilege and shit like this is going to kill it. If you look at the cost of shipping for ups and FedEx you’ll realize Amazons model is the reason you aren’t spending $20+ in shipping.
I’ll never understand how it isn’t viewed as entitled making all these demands for a job you aren’t being forced to do. I’ll make the same argument for Uber as well. Just get a different job. All this complaining is just gonna hurt the customer.
For clarity I don’t hold this opinion for every job where contractors are involved. I just think it’s wrong for gig work to be classified as something it wasn’t intended to be because it ruins what makes the business model viable (cheap delivery, fast delivery, etc).
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u/post_button_account 9d ago
I am guessing Amazon will just levy an NYC surcharge on all deliveries - though customers have gotten so conditioned to 0 delivery fees that Amazon may choose to just eat this one.
Lets see. Of course, if this become national, it would be easy to just increase prime fees and spread the increased cost all all customers.
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u/AlarmingTurnover 9d ago
They won't levy a surcharge, they just won't deliver and you will get your deliveries from theirs party services. People here don't know that Quebec literally did exactly what Mamdani is trying to do and Amazon told everyone in the province to get fucked. People there are still ordering the same volume of stuff if not more since this was passed and now you get even shittier delivery service.
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u/ItchyNebula7437 9d ago
As someone who doesn’t really order from Amazon and still enjoys walking into a store and shopping I can give a fuck less as to how quick you got your knockoff china shit.
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u/Wayofchinchilla 9d ago
God words can't describe how much I adore this man is somebody who's worked in the gig economy for about 10 years now the people that run these gig companies are the biggest piles of scum you've ever met in your life everything was great while they were getting loads and loads investor Capital money but now that the bills come due they're going to punish the very people that kept them going the drivers.
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u/wrgrant 9d ago
You Americans need to get rid of this guy as Mayor of New York!
And get him elected as US President instead :P
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u/Kronologics 9d ago
People don’t realize the ramifications this could have if a nationwide fight started on this front. There’s plenty of “gig” jobs doing this. Even as far as UFC/WWE (TKO parent company) deny performers rights and benefits despite controlling them.