See more of our coverage in your search results.
Big Apple delivery drivers are demanding a sitdown with supposed Mayor Zogran Mamdani over his plans to ban Amazon from hiring them as third-party contractors — but they say City Hall has snubbed them, even as experts warned the bill could leave thousands unemployed.
“We have reached out to the mayor’s office. We have not received anything so far,” said delivery worker Kris Basmagy at a rally opposing supposed “man of the people” Mamdani’s “Delivery Protection Act” outside City Hall Thursday.
“Amazon can absorb this — small businesses cannot,” Basmagy added. “A driver supporting a family cannot, and the owners who built these companies shouldn’t have to watch them disappear.”
He was just one of about two dozen delivery workers at the rally who railed against the Delivery Protection Act, which Mamdani and his socialist City Council ally Tiffany Cabán claim will increase worker safety and wages by forcing Amazon to directly employ the roughly 5,000 delivery workers who support it in the city.
Amazon currently uses third-party contractors to staff its delivery services in New York, in step with the business model it uses across the country.
Those workers and business owners whose livelihoods could be lost let City Hall know exactly what was on the line for them.
“What this bill actually does — it puts thousands of jobs at risk,” railed Christine Chan, owner of Highgate Logistics.
“So, you may not care about me as an employer, but care about the 200 employees that work with me that take the subway, take the 3 train into Harlem to work, and what will happen to their livelihoods,” Chan added. “Some call it fearmongering that these jobs might disappear; I call it common sense.”
Heaven Sanchez, a lead driver at Logistics Xpress, said the job gave him stability and gave him the ability to financially support his mother and family.
“Before I got this opportunity, I was struggling financially and was on the verge of homelessness,” Sanchez said.
“The Delivery Protection Act is presented as a way to protect workers, but I’m a worker, and I’m here to tell you I’m worried about what it could mean for my small business that employs me and my job,” he said. “If this puts my employer out of business and costs me my job, I could be right back in the situation I worked so hard to get out of.”
His boss, Logistics Xpress owner Bashar Yazghi, told how he was raised by immigrant parents and started the business to help his family achieve the American dream — and that the people he employs are seeking the same thing.
“This business isn’t just my American Dream — it’s become the American Dream for so many of our employees that we employ as small business owners,” he said. “I know my employees personally. They call me late at night when they’re struggling, and I know their families, their challenges, and their dreams.”
“I believe in protecting workers, and I believe in fair wages, safety, and accountability,” Yazghi added. “But how are we protecting workers if we’re putting the very jobs that they depend on at risk?”
The radical union-backed bill was first proposed in 2025 by Cabán and reintroduced this year, and has strong support with about 34 co-signers on the City Council — though Speaker Julie Menin has been notably hesitant about the measure given the risks of job loss.
Critics have pointed to Amazon’s response to a 2025 showdown with unionized workers at a Canadian warehouse, which ended with nearly 5,000 workers out of work — and cautioned Amazon could pull a similar play in New York.
But Cabán has brushed those fears aside — previously telling The Post “I call bull” and accusing Amazon of bluffing.
“This is the kind of thing that they threaten all the time,” she said. “It’s part of their tactics overall. They’ve spent over $13 million at this point to spread misinformation.”
Mamdani, meanwhile, held a competing rally to stump for the bill Thursday.
“When a driver wears an Amazon vest, drives an Amazon van, follows a route Amazon sets, and Amazon insists that driver does not work for them. What is that if not exploitation?” he said at the rally, alongside members of the Teamsters union as well as other union reps and lawmakers.
“When a multi-trillion-dollar corporation hires a delivery subcontractor so that they do not have to treat their workers as employees and protect their safety, what is that if not exploitation?” Hizzoner said.
A vote on the bill was expected Thursday but didn’t happen, while unlikely voices like Comptroller Mark Levine began to chime in with support — which left some critics shaking their heads about the blind fervor of Mamdani’s administration and its allies.
“It is beyond ridiculous that the comptroller whose job it is supposed to be to ensure we have a robust economy and keep jobs in our city thinks it is a good idea to drive thousands of jobs out of our city,” one insider lamented, calling the legislation a “terrible job killing bill.”