# How Amazon Landed on Mamdani’s Labor Agenda

An episode of [Big Take](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1578096201), 17 Aug 2026, 19 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/tracking.swap.fm/track/UVBrz8bN8aM2Xe47PEPu/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/825d4e29-b616-46f4-afd7-ae2b0013005c/cc68b584-4a8f-4e23-be7c-b4a9016a0c55/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=8b1dd624-a026-43e9-8b57-ae2b00130066

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is backing a bill that would challenge the subcontractor model Amazon relies on for last-mile deliveries, and the company is spending millions to fight it. On today’s Big Take podcast, reporters Spencer Soper and Josh Eidelson unpack what this bill could mean for the delivery drivers — and corporate America’s reliance on subcontractors more broadly. Read more: • Amazon Is in the Crosshairs of Mamdani’s Worker Agenda • What Trump Delivered for Amazon We have a special Bloomberg subscription offer for podcast listeners at Bloomberg.com/podcastoffer. Hosted by Sarah Holder; Produced by Rachael Lewis-Krisky and Julia Press; Reported by Josh Eidelson and Spencer Soper; Edited by Naomi Shavin and Julia Weaver. Fact-checking by Victor Swezey and Brunella Tipismana Urbano; Engineering by Sean Carter. Senior Producer: Naomi Shavin; Deputy Executive Producer: Julia Weaver. Executive Producer: Nicole Beemsterboer. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:02] Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news, special delivery.
[0:11] Speaker 2: New York City mayors are on Mom Donnie ran for
[0:14] Speaker 2: office on a promise to take on powerful companies that
[0:17] Speaker 2: he says exploit workers and avoid accountability. His latest focus
[0:23] Speaker 2: is Amazon.
[0:24] Speaker 1: It looks like an Amazon delivery.
[0:28] Speaker 3: And he drives like an Amazon delivery, and it's an
[0:31] Speaker 3: Amazon delivery.
[0:34] Speaker 2: Amazon relies on a network of thousands of drivers around
[0:37] Speaker 2: the city to get its packages delivered on time. Those
[0:41] Speaker 2: drivers are employed by third party contractors, not by Amazon itself.
[0:47] Speaker 2: Amazon tells these subcontractors where to drive, who to hire,
[0:51] Speaker 2: and what I was to work. Mam Donnie says Amazon
[0:56] Speaker 2: should hire them.
[0:57] Speaker 3: This is why I'm proud to support the Delivery Protection.
[1:00] Speaker 2: The Delivery Protection Act was introduced in New York City
[1:03] Speaker 2: Council last year, and last week the mayor announced his support.
[1:08] Speaker 2: The bill would establish a licensing system for last mile facilities,
[1:13] Speaker 2: which are the final sorting and distribution sites before packages
[1:16] Speaker 2: get to customers. It would also make companies like Amazon
[1:20] Speaker 2: responsible for employing workers at those facilities, the workers who
[1:24] Speaker 2: do the delivering. Amazon has come out against the bill,
[1:28] Speaker 2: and it's poured five million dollars into a campaign to
[1:31] Speaker 2: defeat it. In response to Bloomberg's reporting, a spokesperson said
[1:35] Speaker 2: the bill is quote forcing us to consider relocating delivery
[1:38] Speaker 2: operations outside of the city unquote, something the spokesperson said
[1:43] Speaker 2: could lead to slower and more expensive delivery service. They
[1:46] Speaker 2: said Amazon is trying to work quote collaboratively with the
[1:49] Speaker 2: city council unquote to prevent that outcome. This fight over
[1:55] Speaker 2: worker classification has been a long time coming.
[1:59] Speaker 1: This is part of a larger phenomenon. I call it
[2:02] Speaker 1: the Who's the boss problem in the US economy.
[2:05] Speaker 2: Josh Eidelson is a senior reporter at Bloomberg covering labor
[2:09] Speaker 2: and work.
[2:10] Speaker 1: You have many workers who are core to a company's brand.
[2:16] Speaker 1: Drivers for Uber, coders for Google, cashiers for McDonald's, who
[2:21] Speaker 1: are generating a lot of profit for a company and
[2:26] Speaker 1: following rules set by that company, but on paper are
[2:29] Speaker 1: not considered by that company to be their employees.
[2:34] Speaker 3: It's been this legally murky area for decades that companies
[2:39] Speaker 3: have just been able to kind of swim in.
[2:42] Speaker 2: Bloomberg e commerce reporter Spencer Soaper says, if the Delivery
[2:46] Speaker 2: Protection Act passes, it can make things a lot less
[2:48] Speaker 2: murky At least in New York, but the implications could
[2:52] Speaker 2: reach much further.
[2:54] Speaker 3: It obliterates this delivery service partner model that they've built nationally, internationally,
[2:59] Speaker 3: actually it obliterates it in New York. And so that's
[3:02] Speaker 3: why Amazon is so worried about this, because they do
[3:06] Speaker 3: see it as his test case.
[3:12] Speaker 2: I'm Sarah Holder, and this is the big take from
[3:14] Speaker 2: Bloomberg News Today. On the show, New York City Council
[3:18] Speaker 2: takes on Amazon's delivery driver model and tries to answer
[3:22] Speaker 2: that crucial question, who's the boss.
[3:31] Speaker 1: Amazon has an army of hundreds of thousands of drivers
[3:36] Speaker 1: delivering millions of packages who are, on paper, employed not
[3:41] Speaker 1: by Amazon but by what Amazon calls delivery service partners,
[3:47] Speaker 1: much much smaller businesses who Amazon contracts with to manage
[3:53] Speaker 1: these drivers.
[3:54] Speaker 2: Bloomberg's Josh Idelson says these drivers have similar concerns as
[3:58] Speaker 2: gig workers, like Uber drivers, but they're classified differently.
[4:02] Speaker 1: Often when people talk about gig workers, they're talking about
[4:05] Speaker 1: workers who are classified by the company they're working for
[4:10] Speaker 1: as independent contractors ten ninety nine, people who are no
[4:15] Speaker 1: one else's employee on paper, subcontracted workers like fast food
[4:21] Speaker 1: cashiers or content moderators for some tech companies or these
[4:27] Speaker 1: delivery drivers. Often they are classified as W two employees,
[4:32] Speaker 1: meaning they have to be paid minimum wage and so on,
[4:35] Speaker 1: but employees of somebody that most Americans have never heard of.
[4:41] Speaker 1: In both cases, you have a big, famous, powerful company
[4:46] Speaker 1: that says it is not the employer of a group
[4:49] Speaker 1: of workers.
[4:50] Speaker 2: And Spencer, why does the company use this model? What
[4:53] Speaker 2: are the benefits for Amazon?
[4:55] Speaker 3: If you look at what the benefits of this model
[4:58] Speaker 3: can be, it does separate the type of benefits workers
[5:03] Speaker 3: can get. So if Amazon we're employing all of these
[5:07] Speaker 3: drivers directly, it would have to offer them the same
[5:10] Speaker 3: health and medical benefits as like employees on Amazon's payroll.
[5:15] Speaker 3: The way they do this now it's up to those
[5:17] Speaker 3: smaller companies to decide what kind of benefits to offer,
[5:20] Speaker 3: and you can see some disparity in the benefits level.
[5:23] Speaker 3: It also comes down to liability. There's so many other
[5:27] Speaker 3: things that you pay into for having employees, things like workers' compensation, insurance,
[5:33] Speaker 3: unemployment insurance, the insurance on the vehicles, and so all
[5:37] Speaker 3: of these things. Through a subcontracted model, it puts Amazon
[5:41] Speaker 3: at arm's length. It's not a nice clean break they're
[5:44] Speaker 3: not completely removed from it, but it definitely blurs the
[5:49] Speaker 3: situation when bad things happen, like someone gets into a
[5:52] Speaker 3: car accident, someone slips and hurts themselves, someone gets bit
[5:56] Speaker 3: by a dog. These are all things that are can
[5:59] Speaker 3: regularly happen in the course of home delivery, and it
[6:04] Speaker 3: just muddies the waters a bit when it comes time
[6:06] Speaker 3: to say, Okay, who's responsible?
[6:09] Speaker 2: What does the company say about why it works with
[6:11] Speaker 2: these delivery service partners and doesn't hire its drivers directly.
[6:15] Speaker 4: Amazon says that they believe small businesses in local communities
[6:21] Speaker 4: know best and that those businesses are managing their own business.
[6:26] Speaker 2: Josh You wrote about a recent effort to get Amazon
[6:29] Speaker 2: to recognize a group of its subcontracted drivers as direct employees.
[6:34] Speaker 4: Tell us about that effort.
[6:36] Speaker 1: A couple years ago in Palmdale, California, a group of
[6:40] Speaker 1: drivers signed up to unionize with the Teamsters, And what
[6:46] Speaker 1: was particularly unusual about this situation is the business owner,
[6:51] Speaker 1: Jonathan Irvin, owner of Battle Tested Strategies, did not fight
[6:56] Speaker 1: the worker's effort to unionize and agree need to recognize
[7:01] Speaker 1: the union and negotiate the union. Argued that Amazon was
[7:07] Speaker 1: a joint employer along with BTS, and that because Amazon,
[7:13] Speaker 1: they said, was a joint employer, Amazon was also obligated
[7:17] Speaker 1: to negotiate when these workers chose to unionize. When the
[7:21] Speaker 1: business owner agreed to recognize the union, Amazon had already said.
[7:26] Speaker 4: That it was shutting off the contract with.
[7:28] Speaker 1: BTS, and from Amazon's perspective, this business owner and the
[7:34] Speaker 1: teamsters were trying to voist collective bargaining onto Amazon. From
[7:41] Speaker 1: the union's perspective and the perspective of workers that I
[7:44] Speaker 1: talked to, Amazon had so much control over the operations
[7:49] Speaker 1: that it was really the boss of these workers, and
[7:52] Speaker 1: when the majority of them chose to unionize, it was
[7:54] Speaker 1: on Amazon to.
[7:56] Speaker 4: Negotiate about the terms.
[7:58] Speaker 1: And the workers brought a case to the US National
[8:02] Speaker 1: Labor Relations Board arguing that Amazon really was also legally
[8:07] Speaker 1: their boss, a so called joint employer, and therefore that
[8:11] Speaker 1: Amazon had violated the law by refusing to negotiate with them.
[8:15] Speaker 2: So the workers brought their case to the NLRB. Why
[8:19] Speaker 2: was this legal challenge so significant?
[8:23] Speaker 1: This was a potential pivotal test case about whether judge
[8:28] Speaker 1: and agency members, the members of the National Labor Relations
[8:33] Speaker 1: Board would rule Amazon to be the boss of a
[8:37] Speaker 1: group of these subcontracted delivery drivers. There was a hope
[8:42] Speaker 1: from labor organizers that this case in California would establish
[8:47] Speaker 1: a significant precedent. That case, when Joe Biden was president,
[8:53] Speaker 1: reached the point of the government issuing a complaint against
[8:56] Speaker 1: Amazon alleging that Amazon was the boss of the workers,
[9:01] Speaker 1: and it was proceeding even in the first year of
[9:04] Speaker 1: the second Trump administration. There was a trial underway, and
[9:10] Speaker 1: the proceedings came to a halt mid trial after a
[9:13] Speaker 1: former attorney for Amazon became the General Council of the
[9:18] Speaker 1: National Labor Relations Board under President Trump.
[9:20] Speaker 2: So what ended up happening with this case? After Trump
[9:23] Speaker 2: installed this new general Council at the NLRB.
[9:25] Speaker 1: The General Council's office reached a settlement in which Amazon
[9:30] Speaker 1: was not deemed the joint employer of these workers and the.
[9:33] Speaker 4: Issue was diffused.
[9:36] Speaker 1: What we did get out of this case is thousands
[9:39] Speaker 1: of pages of internal company documents that shed new light
[9:44] Speaker 1: on how Amazon governs not only what drivers deliver, but
[9:51] Speaker 1: when they deliver it, where they drive, the turns that
[9:56] Speaker 1: they make to get from one stop to another, the
[10:00] Speaker 1: fendliness of their fingernails, what they post on social media,
[10:05] Speaker 1: and the documents in that case, from the perspective of
[10:09] Speaker 1: some of the drivers and advocates, strengthen the argument that
[10:12] Speaker 1: this is another example of a company wanting to have
[10:15] Speaker 1: its cake and offload the calories and the cleanup of
[10:19] Speaker 1: the crumbs to somebody else.
[10:21] Speaker 2: And what did Amazon say when you presented your reporting
[10:25] Speaker 2: drawn from these documents that gave you new insights into
[10:28] Speaker 2: the level of control Amazon appears to have over the
[10:31] Speaker 2: people it calls it subcontractors.
[10:33] Speaker 1: Amazon says that some of the assignments it makes our
[10:38] Speaker 1: suggestions and not mandates. Amazon says that delivery service partners
[10:45] Speaker 1: run their own business independently, and that it has the
[10:50] Speaker 1: Delivery Service Partner program because local businesses know best how
[10:56] Speaker 1: to operate successfully in their communities.
[10:59] Speaker 2: And how did the tea union respond to this NLARB settlement?
[11:03] Speaker 2: What has the next course of action been for them?
[11:05] Speaker 1: The Teamsters have continued to fight this settlement. They have
[11:08] Speaker 1: pointed out that the General Council of the LERB formerly
[11:12] Speaker 1: was an outside attorney for Amazon. There's been congressional inquiry
[11:18] Speaker 1: into her decision not to recuse herself in this case.
[11:22] Speaker 1: The Teamsters union, they say drivers at dozens of these
[11:26] Speaker 1: so called Delivery Service Partners have signed up to organize
[11:30] Speaker 1: with the teamsters. The union has also been pushing at
[11:34] Speaker 1: the city level for legislation to force companies like Amazon
[11:39] Speaker 1: to directly employed drivers.
[11:42] Speaker 2: And Spencer, how did this case and the outcome from
[11:45] Speaker 2: this case pave the way for this effort we're seeing
[11:48] Speaker 2: in New York.
[11:49] Speaker 3: City with the NLRB in the union question, there was
[11:52] Speaker 3: all of this anticipation, like, finally we'll get some clarity
[11:56] Speaker 3: about whether Amazon is the boss. But there was no clarity.
[12:00] Speaker 3: And so what we're seeing in New York is a
[12:03] Speaker 3: recognition about how murky this is, how there's really no
[12:08] Speaker 3: traction on anything at the federal level to clarify it.
[12:12] Speaker 3: And so you have a city council and mayor stepping
[12:16] Speaker 3: in and saying, you know what, we're going to tidy.
[12:17] Speaker 1: This up.
[12:24] Speaker 2: After the break Inside that effort in New York City,
[12:39] Speaker 2: Spencer Soper and his colleague Naja Katan interviewed twenty drivers
[12:43] Speaker 2: as part of the reporting on the Delivery Protection Act.
[12:46] Speaker 2: They heard stories about the conditions that workers are facing
[12:49] Speaker 2: on the job and how they feel about New York
[12:52] Speaker 2: City's proposed legislation.
[12:54] Speaker 3: The fears are the unknown and job loss, and also
[12:58] Speaker 3: just not really seeing what this will do for them.
[13:01] Speaker 3: There's nothing in the legislation that says you're going to
[13:03] Speaker 3: get a raise, There's nothing in the legislation that says
[13:06] Speaker 3: you're not going to have to deliver as many boxes.
[13:09] Speaker 3: It's a lot of these theoretical benefits, like it might
[13:12] Speaker 3: make it easier to form a union, the city will
[13:15] Speaker 3: have some leverage to help you if things go poorly.
[13:18] Speaker 3: One woman that my colleague not I go to talk
[13:20] Speaker 3: to is thirty eight. She was in the back of
[13:23] Speaker 3: the van on a really hot day and passed out,
[13:26] Speaker 3: you know, and had to call nine one one and
[13:28] Speaker 3: go to the hospital for heat exhaustion. And then you
[13:31] Speaker 3: start questioning, like I'm really putting my body on the
[13:34] Speaker 3: line here, who's benefiting? Am I getting enough out of this?
[13:38] Speaker 3: And then the hope is, hey, we just need someone
[13:41] Speaker 3: to go to. You know, this company is so powerful.
[13:45] Speaker 3: I'm out there delivering packages. It's not clear like how
[13:48] Speaker 3: I can use some judgment if I don't feel safe.
[13:52] Speaker 3: Will there be a consequence? Am I going to get
[13:54] Speaker 3: scolded when I get back for not delivering the package?
[13:57] Speaker 3: I think people just want some higher power that doesn't
[14:03] Speaker 3: have their judgment clouded by their financial interest stepping in
[14:08] Speaker 3: to help arbiter. What is reasonable to expect of somebody
[14:12] Speaker 3: making twenty dollars an hour delivery packages on the streets
[14:15] Speaker 3: of New York City.
[14:17] Speaker 2: Walk me through the proposal that the mayor is actually
[14:20] Speaker 2: backing in New York City. What would the Delivery Protection
[14:23] Speaker 2: Act do to change these circumstances.
[14:26] Speaker 3: That's a great question because it's not entirely clear. I mean,
[14:30] Speaker 3: it does address the employment question right. Another important thing,
[14:35] Speaker 3: it requires licensing, right, So if you're going to run
[14:38] Speaker 3: a delivery hub in New York City, you know every
[14:41] Speaker 3: two years you've got to go to the city's Department
[14:44] Speaker 3: of Consumer and Worker Protection and get a license to operate.
[14:46] Speaker 3: And just the fact that you need a license every
[14:48] Speaker 3: two years is going to give the city some leverage
[14:50] Speaker 3: over how you operate. And then the other big thing
[14:53] Speaker 3: that Amazon is really pushing back hard on and is
[14:57] Speaker 3: the number one contributor to the opposition CA campaign by
[15:00] Speaker 3: a huge margin, it says, if you have a delivery
[15:03] Speaker 3: hub within the city where workers are doing the last
[15:06] Speaker 3: mile of delivery, those workers are your employees. You have
[15:09] Speaker 3: to directly employ them, and there's no wiggle room around that.
[15:12] Speaker 2: So that's a lot of clarity for Amazon here. How
[15:16] Speaker 2: much would it cost them if it passed?
[15:18] Speaker 3: There's no clear estimate on that. There's a group that
[15:21] Speaker 3: did a study pinning down the costs per shopper, and
[15:25] Speaker 3: their worst case scenario is, like the typical customer if
[15:28] Speaker 3: this bill passes, and again this isn't just specific to
[15:31] Speaker 3: Amazon delivery, but just in general, it would cost the
[15:34] Speaker 3: typical shopper like an extra six hundred dollars a year
[15:36] Speaker 3: for deliveries. It would certainly cost Amazon money. And that's
[15:40] Speaker 3: the calculation Amazon's doing is do we pull up stakes
[15:44] Speaker 3: and abandon a lot of this infrastructure that we have
[15:46] Speaker 3: in the city now, all of these delivery hubs, and
[15:49] Speaker 3: instead like start making deliveries from Hoboken or New Hyde
[15:53] Speaker 3: Park or Mount Vernon, you know, just over the city
[15:56] Speaker 3: limits or not, or is it some kind of combination
[16:00] Speaker 3: of the two. We really don't know precisely what they'll do,
[16:03] Speaker 3: and I'm sure they're calculating multiple different scenarios.
[16:08] Speaker 2: Who are the proposal's biggest supporters.
[16:11] Speaker 3: Largely labor, you know, I mean this is a teamster
[16:13] Speaker 3: led initiative, and when you think about who's threatened by
[16:16] Speaker 3: Amazon's sudden rise in home delivery. It's really the teamsters
[16:21] Speaker 3: ups drivers, because they're just being slowly and gradually eclipsed
[16:26] Speaker 3: by the rise of Amazon. And so that's why this
[16:29] Speaker 3: is really a predominantly a labor led movement.
[16:32] Speaker 1: Part of the bigger picture here is it's hard to
[16:34] Speaker 1: unionize big non union companies Josh Idelson. Again, it's hard
[16:39] Speaker 1: to get transformative federal change. It was hard for labor
[16:44] Speaker 1: even when Democrats controlled the federal government to do that.
[16:47] Speaker 1: There has been recently, and really over many years, an
[16:52] Speaker 1: increased attention from worker advocates and unions, in particular to
[16:58] Speaker 1: cities and states as a you to try to change
[17:02] Speaker 1: people's working conditions or to try to make it easier
[17:06] Speaker 1: for people to organize. Right now, the teamsters see momentum
[17:10] Speaker 1: behind this bill. They have a super majority of the
[17:14] Speaker 1: city council, they have a quite avowedly pro labor and
[17:18] Speaker 1: popular mayor behind it. And what has been exposed about
[17:25] Speaker 1: the types of control that Amazon is able to exercise,
[17:30] Speaker 1: some organizers see also as helpful in making the argument
[17:35] Speaker 1: that if the company already is dictating what gets delivered
[17:40] Speaker 1: and who is eligible to deliver it and where they
[17:43] Speaker 1: go and when they go and what they look like.
[17:46] Speaker 1: Then the entity dictating that should be liable for how
[17:51] Speaker 1: those workers are treated.
[17:54] Speaker 2: And what's next here? Josh, do you see similar bills
[17:57] Speaker 2: advancing in more cities?
[17:59] Speaker 4: I expect we will.
[18:00] Speaker 1: We'll see, as has already begun to happen, similar bills
[18:03] Speaker 1: pushed in other cities. We've seen other types of labor legislation,
[18:10] Speaker 1: like restricting companies' ability to fire people for no reason
[18:15] Speaker 1: or to change worker schedules at the last minute, advanced
[18:19] Speaker 1: from one city, in many cases New York onward to
[18:23] Speaker 1: be proposed elsewhere.
[18:25] Speaker 4: We should expect a long legal battle.
[18:29] Speaker 1: Over this piece of legislation, but even as that battle
[18:34] Speaker 1: is playing out, we are likely to see fights in
[18:36] Speaker 1: many other places about similar proposals.
[18:47] Speaker 2: This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder.
[18:51] Speaker 2: To get more from The Big Take and unlimited access
[18:54] Speaker 2: to all of Bloomberg dot Com, subscribe today at Bloomberg
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[19:07] Speaker 2: Thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow,

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