New York City’s latest last mile shipment network effort offers a playbook for more regulators looking to hold corporate giants like Amazon responsible for workers whose labor is performed through delivery contractors, legal observers say.
The Delivery Protection Act, expected to pass this year, is backed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the majority of the city council. It would require last mile facilities to obtain licenses from the city to establish minimum safety, training, and worker protection standards.
The legislation is an early sign of a broader regulatory effort to redraw the lines of responsibility with the rise of gig work — which has increasingly divided the labor market over who should be accountable when the company controlling the work isn’t technically the employer, according to Stewart J. Schwab, a Cornell University law professor and an employment law scholar.
The push has expanded to Chicago, with similar legislation backed by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. The union has worked to organize drivers, successfully winning voluntary recognition from Battle-Tested Strategies — a veteran-owned logistics and package-delivery company — for a group of 84 drivers in Palmdale, Calif.
Drivers are currently forced to take routes that put them and pedestrians at risk, Schwab said. But if Amazon had to assume liability, warehouse and storage facility operators would have to rethink their methods for making drivers take those routes, he said.
“The data...
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