A New York City bill that would ban major shippers from using contractor drivers could drive delivery costs up by 267% per package, Amazon warns, and the company says it may move operations out of the five boroughs entirely.
Amazon told Fox News Digital that Intro 0518-2026, the so-called Delivery Protection Act, would put more than 5,000 jobs at immediate risk and saddle every New York City household with an estimated $664 in additional annual delivery costs. The company said it is already weighing whether to relocate delivery stations and operations to New Jersey, Long Island, or Westchester, outside the reach of the mandate.
The bill, introduced by Council Member Tiffany Cabán and backed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani, would require operators of last-mile delivery facilities to directly employ the workers who handle deliveries. It would restrict the use of third-party contractors, the independent delivery service partners that currently carry packages from warehouse to doorstep across all five boroughs.
Mamdani's office issued a press release casting the legislation as a crackdown on corporate evasion. The mayor's office accused companies like Amazon of building "billion-dollar business models by insulating themselves from accountability through a system of exploitative subcontracting."
"Through delivery subcontractors, corporations dictate hiring standards, delivery routes, steep productivity quotas and workplace expectations while denying that the workers making those deliveries are employees. The result is a system that leaves workers vulnerable and corporations free to avoid accountability for reckless conditions on city streets."
That framing treats every delivery contractor as a shell arrangement designed to dodge responsibility. Amazon pushed back hard, pointing to an economic analysis by consulting firm AKRF, commissioned by the Five Borough Jobs Campaign, that projected sweeping cost increases and service disruptions if the bill passes.
An Amazon spokesperson laid out the numbers plainly:
"This bill would drive delivery costs up by forcing facilities farther from customers, increasing per-route travel time, fuel, and labor while reducing packages delivered per route, with full relocation modeling a 267% cost increase per package for deliveries currently handled by NYC facilities, service-level declines of 10 to 21%, and an additional $664 in annual delivery costs passed through to every New York City household."
A 267% jump per package is not a rounding error. And the $664 figure is not a worst-case scenario tucked into a footnote, Amazon presented it as the projected pass-through cost to ordinary households if the company is forced to shift its delivery network outside the city.
The bill's supporters describe it as a check on Amazon's power. But the businesses most directly in the crosshairs are not multinational corporations. They are the independent delivery service partners, the DSPs, who contract with Amazon to run local routes with their own W-2 employees.
Amazon warned that more than 40 of those partners and their 5,000-plus employees face elimination under the legislation. The New York Delivers Coalition, a group representing many of those small operators, put the total number of local jobs at risk even higher, above 10,000.
The coalition's statement made clear who these business owners are:
"Many of the small business owners in this coalition are minorities and first-generation Americans who beat the odds to become entrepreneurs in New York City. We built our businesses from the ground up in our own communities, often starting with ourselves or family members as our first employees. Today, many of us employ more than 100 New Yorkers, including people who have faced barriers to traditional employment and have built careers and financial security through these jobs. Intro 0518 puts all of that, the businesses we built, the jobs we created, and the futures our employees are building, at risk."
That is not a corporate lobbying script. Those are small business owners, many of them minority entrepreneurs, warning that a bill sold as pro-worker would wipe out their companies and the jobs they created in their own neighborhoods.
Amazon said it has invited every City Council member to tour its delivery stations and meet the DSP operators and their employees firsthand. The company singled out Cabán, the bill's sponsor, noting it had asked her directly to visit, and received no response.
"We hope Councilmember Cabán will do so, we've asked her directly, but haven't gotten a response yet."
The New York Delivers Coalition echoed that frustration, saying its members want a seat at the table before decisions are made that could shut them down.
"Our message is simple: come see how our businesses actually work. Visit one of our facilities, ride along on a delivery route, and talk directly to our employees about their jobs and what's at stake."
Neither the City Council, Cabán, nor Mamdani's office returned Fox News Digital's request for comment.
The company's public posture is conciliatory, at least on the surface. An Amazon spokesperson stressed the company's preference for collaboration over confrontation.
"We've made clear to every Council member: we're not looking to leave New York City and our goal has been, and continues to be, to work collaboratively with them."
But the same spokesperson confirmed Amazon is evaluating "all options to try and limit this impact, including the potential relocation of operations and delivery facilities outside of New York City." The destinations under consideration, New Jersey, Long Island, Westchester, sit just beyond the city's jurisdiction. Packages would still arrive in Manhattan and Brooklyn, but from farther away, at higher cost, with longer transit times.
The coalition's own warning reinforced that dynamic. "Large corporations like Amazon have the resources to adapt to sweeping new mandates," the group stated. "It's the independent small businesses they contract with that would be forced to shut down, putting the jobs of over 10,000 local New Yorkers at risk."
In other words, Amazon can absorb the hit by moving trucks across a state line. The DSP owners who built delivery businesses in the Bronx and Queens cannot.
Beyond cost, the AKRF analysis projected service-level declines of 10 to 21 percent if the bill takes effect. Longer routes from suburban staging areas mean fewer packages per truck per shift. That translates directly to slower delivery windows across all five boroughs, a downgrade paid for by the same consumers the bill's backers claim to protect.
Amazon currently operates delivery stations inside New York City, keeping routes short and turnaround times tight. Forcing those facilities out of the city does not eliminate deliveries. It just makes every one of them slower and more expensive. The cost gets passed to households. The jobs get passed to the suburbs. And the small business owners who built the local delivery network get passed over entirely.
Mamdani and Cabán have framed this bill as a stand against corporate exploitation. The actual math tells a different story: higher prices for consumers, shuttered businesses for minority entrepreneurs, and lost jobs for thousands of working New Yorkers, all to impose a labor model on companies that are already employing W-2 workers through independent partners.
When the people a policy claims to help are the ones begging lawmakers to stop, that is not reform. That is ideology overriding common sense, and New Yorkers would pay the bill.