A liberal City Council member who wants to ban delivery companies from hiring third-party drivers shrugged off reports that her crusade could kill thousands of Big Apple jobs on Wednesday.
Experts warned last week that Council member Tiffany Cabán’s Delivery Protection Act could prompt Amazon to close more than a dozen warehouses and move upwards of 5,000 workers out of the city.
But the left-wing lawmaker called the warnings “bull.”
“I mean, this is the kind of thing that they threaten all the time,” Cabán (D-22) told The Post outside of an unrelated hearing Wednesday.
“I call bull, and you know, it’s part of their tactics overall. They’ve spent over $13 million at this point to spread misinformation,” she claimed of the group’s lobbying efforts.
Cabán’s bill aims to regulate and streamline safety training and operations for delivery companies like Amazon and UPS – but would prevent them from using third-party contractors or gig workers to fulfill deliveries.
The law effectively forces companies to hire their third-party delivery contractors as employees — with companies who don’t comply facing hefty $500,000 penalties paid to the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection.
A spokesperson for Amazon claimed that Cabán has yet to agree to take a tour or meet with any of their third-party delivery drivers in person despite requests from company officials.
The bill is backed by a veto-proof 35 council members and Mayor Zohran Mamdani as it heads to a vote of city lawmakers on Thursday.
Mamdani similarly downplayed the risks associated with the legislation at an unrelated press conference in Brooklyn Tuesday.
“This is legislation that would not only make our streets safer, but would also protect the workers who create so much of the profits that a company like Amazon reports, you know, not only across the city or across the country, but across the world,” Hizzoner said.
The mayor dodged a follow up question from a reporter who asked if he believed it could lead to job losses.
“I think that this is something that will lead to better protections for workers,” he answered.
But Mamdani’s Consumer and Worker Protection Commissioner Sam Levine acknowledged there would be some job losses in an August interview with Bloomberg — claiming that the bill has a one-year implementation period “so we have an opportunity to make sure that these workers find jobs.”
Amazon previously warned that the bill would also wipe out its small business delivery partners – and would cause them to have to “seriously examine” how the company could meet New Yorkers’ needs without compromising their services.
“(The bill) would directly undermine that commitment by threatening the more than 40 local small businesses we partner with to deliver to Amazon customers and the jobs of the more than 5,000 people they employ,” a spokesperson said in City Council testimony in April.
“It would also compel us to seriously examine how we could still meet our commitment to New Yorkers—which includes the potential for relocating operations and delivery facilities outside of New York City.”
