Amazon and more than a dozen of its subcontractors in New York City and the suburbs face union allegations they flouted a state law that protects employees from mass layoffs or closures.
A complaint submitted to the state Labor Department on Tuesday by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters charges that Amazon and 13 subcontractors violated the state’s WARN Act by failing to give the megaretailer’s delivery drivers at least 90 days’ notice of their impending terminations.
The complaints were filed on behalf of former workers who claim their shops were shut down with no warning between September 2023 and October 2025. The Teamsters estimate more than 1,300 workers were impacted by the closures.
The union also identified cases where Amazon subcontractors allegedly sent layoff notices after the layoff or closure date.
The move comes amid growing support in the City Council for a bill that would force Amazon to directly employ the army of drivers and depot workers who currently work for local subcontractors to deliver an estimated 2 million packages each day across the five boroughs. Mayor Zohran Mamdani recently came out in support of the bill, which Amazon and business groups vehemently oppose.
Among fired workers covered by the Tuesday complaint are Latrice Johnson, who said she was laid off from a job she “loved” as a delivery driver servicing Queens and Brooklyn in August 2025. She said she was at home on her day off when a group chat of her coworkers began blowing up: Managers had apparently told people who clocked in at the sprawling Amazon garage in Maspeth, Queens, known as DBK4 that the company would be shutting down immediately.
Official word of the mass layoff came several days later, when Johnson received a boilerplate letter from Cornucopia Logistics, the Amazon subcontractor where she worked for two years. The state labor department’s WARN notice portal lists Aug. 20, 2025 as the garage’s closure date, but Aug. 26 as the notice date.
“It was devastating. I was looking forward to going back in and making next week’s paycheck,” Johnson, a single mother, told The City Reporter. “You call me a top driver two months ago, and now you’re giving me the boot?”
The Teamsters’ complaint lists Johnson’s former employer and a dozen others, as well as Amazon itself, among the companies it alleges flouted the WARN Act. The union estimates the affected workers could be owed up to $11 million in back pay.
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In a statement, Amazon spokesperson Steve Kelly dismissed the complaint as bluster from the Teamsters. He reiterated that the impacted drivers were not Amazon employees, and that the tech giant bears no responsibility for its subcontractors’ operations, including “decisions about whether to close their businesses.”
The subcontractors, Kelly said, “are independent small businesses. They make their own decisions when it comes to hiring, fleet management, capacity planning, and route assignments — and whether they want to work with other companies besides Amazon.”
Kelly noted that it is the subcontractors’ responsibility “to comply with all applicable WARN laws” when they close their doors — and to give Amazon a heads-up, too.
In Amazon’s parlance, the subcontractors are known as “delivery service partners” or DSP’s.
“We ask DSPs to keep us informed so that if they do cease operations, we’re able to connect impacted individuals with other DSPs in the area who may be hiring and to ensure continuity of delivery services for customers,” said Kelly.
Spokespersons for Cornucopia and other subcontractors did not respond to requests for comment.
New York’s 90-Day Rule
In New York, private businesses with 50 or more full-time employees must give 90 days’ notice of closures or mass layoffs to employees and the Department of Labor. Businesses that do not provide notice may be required to pay back wages and benefits to employees and pay a civil penalty.
Last year, the shuttered news outlet The Messenger agreed to pay $4.5 million to settle a federal class action lawsuit filed on behalf of nearly 300 staff who claimed they’d been laid off without warning.
Amazon has for years insisted that the workers delivering its packages for the company — who drive Amazon-branded vehicles, wear Amazon-branded vests, and rely on Amazon for roadside support — are not actually its employees. In New York, Amazon’s delivery fleet is subcontracted by more than 40 “delivery service partners,” an arrangement critics say shields the tech giant from liability in case of accidents, wage theft complaints, and collective bargaining.
In a six-page letter affixed to the complaint, Randy Korgan, the director of the Teamsters’ Amazon division, and the president of the union’s New York council, Thomas Gesualdi, urged the state Labor Department and the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection to investigate Amazon and the workers’ direct employers for the alleged WARN Act violations and to “open enforcement proceedings where appropriate.”
A spokesperson for the state labor department did not respond to a request for comment.
City Hall spokesperson Cassio Mendoza said in a statement that the Teamsters’ allegations “underscore the fact that subcontracting by companies like Amazon has become a way to outsource labor and accountability, leaving last-mile delivery drivers with unstable incomes and dangerous working conditions while making our streets less safe.”
The union is the leading force pushing the City Council to pass a bill that would force Amazon to directly hire delivery workers.
Amazon and business groups claim that the bill, known as the Delivery Protection Act, will kneecap small businesses and lead to thousands of lost jobs. Representatives for Amazon have said the company may consider pulling out of New York entirely if the law passes.
The bill, introduced by Councilmember Tiffany Cabán of Queens, is backed by 34 lawmakers and Mayor Mamdani but has yet to be brought to a full vote.
Records show that Amazon has bankrolled a campaign against the bill to the tune of more than $5 million, New York Focus reported.
“New Yorkers should not be forced to subsidize corporate profits with less safe streets and more precarious jobs,” Mamdani said in a statement last week formally throwing his support behind Cabán’s bill. “It’s time to end the subcontracting model that puts profits over people and build an economy that works for working New Yorkers.”
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