Amazon may close more than a dozen NYC warehouses and cut thousands of jobs if Mayor Mamdani's delivery bill passes, experts say the company will likely follow through.

The Post reported that Amazon has said it may shutter more than a dozen last-mile warehouses and move thousands of workers out of New York City if the Delivery Protection Act becomes law. Industry experts told the paper the company is likely to make good on that warning.

The bill, backed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani, would force Amazon to directly hire upwards of 5,000 delivery workers now employed by third-party contractors. Consultants and logistics veterans say enactment could also mean closing about 15 last-mile facilities and cutting another 2,000 warehouse staff who keep them running.

Queens Council Member Tiffany Cabán first introduced the measure a year ago and reintroduced it in 2026. It has roughly 34 co-signers on the City Council. No vote has been scheduled. A source close to the talks said the mayor supports the bill and that some version “will have to pass,” though the final product may leave both sides unhappy.

Quebec already showed what pressure on Amazon’s model can trigger

Delivery company owners point to Canada. Early last year Amazon closed seven warehouses near Montreal amid a labor fight after the Confédération des syndicats nationaux organized 300 workers at a Laval facility. By March 2025, some 1,900 Canadians across those warehouses and 2,800 delivery contractors tied to them had lost their jobs.

Kris Basmagy, owner of DashWave Delivery, which handles Amazon packages on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and employs 150 workers, put it plainly.

"Look at what happened in Quebec. There was pressure on Amazon’s model, and it pulled out."

Marc Wulfraat, president of Montreal logistics firm MWPVL International, said Amazon is still paying rent on more than 1.6 million square feet of vacant Montreal space that cost hundreds of millions to build, with at least two sites offered as subleases. He argued the company would answer a New York mandate the same way.

"Amazon will retaliate, because it has to send a firm message to the rest of the country that ‘If you mess with us, this is what will happen.’"

Wulfraat added that Amazon closes buildings “left, right and center when there is union activity” across its global network. Former Amazon executive and logistics consultant Brittain Ladd struck the same note on the New York fight.

"Amazon wouldn’t blink about shutting down the 15 facilities in New York City if it felt that the legislation was a threat to its business model. This is about a model that could be copied in other cities."

Small contractors say they would be wiped out first

About 40 independent companies employ the 5,000 delivery workers who would be pulled onto Amazon’s direct payroll under the bill. Owners say they are already treated as afterthoughts in the political push. Basmagy described a “laser focus on punishing Amazon no matter what the repercussions might be” for business owners, and said “it’s as if we no longer exist.”

Joe Artus, owner of WGA Transit, which has recruited formerly incarcerated and homeless workers to deliver Amazon packages in Harlem, said his firm and its 189 employees would not survive the current version of the law.

"I have a 21-month-old daughter. If this thing passes, there is no way for my company to exist or to keep my 189 employees."

Basmagy also warned nothing stops Amazon from shifting work to warehouses rising along the New Jersey Turnpike if city sites become untenable. A source familiar with Amazon’s operations said many same-day and same-morning deliveries in the city could slip to the next day if local warehouses close. Amazon itself maintains that delivery times and prices would rise if it shut the facilities.

An Amazon-bankrolled AKFR study claimed the Delivery Protection Act would cost New Yorkers an extra $664 a year, or about $5.20 per package, a figure that also covers deliveries by firms such as FedEx and DoorDash. Proponents argue the bill would raise pay and improve safety for workers now on contractor payrolls. Amazon does not directly employ delivery drivers anywhere else in the country.

City Hall’s labor push collides with jobs already on the line

Amazon employs, directly or indirectly, more than 12,000 hourly workers in New York, more than twice its Quebec footprint. Last-mile sites include facilities in Brooklyn’s Red Hook, Queens’ Maspeth, and an 87,000-square-foot Manhattan warehouse at 706 11th Ave. identified in a report from Comptroller Mark Levine. The bill would not cover the 5,500 workers at the JFK8 fulfillment center on Staten Island who voted to unionize in 2022 and still lack a contract.

Amazon spokesperson Steve Kelly said New York City is “one of the largest and most complex delivery regions in the country” and is “best served by a network of local small businesses deeply embedded in their communities.” The company has called the city “fundamentally different” from Quebec, where it ran far fewer sites.

The Teamsters countered that Amazon “will say or do whatever it takes to deny workers stronger rights and wages and abdicate its responsibilities for its own employees.” In April the National Labor Relations Board ordered Amazon to the bargaining table with the Teamsters on Staten Island; Amazon has sued over the board’s legitimacy and remains in litigation over labor fights in Bessemer, Alabama, and Staten Island.

Council Speaker Julie Menin is among members described as uncomfortable with potential job losses. Compromises under discussion include letting independent contractors keep delivering while requiring Amazon to offer stronger safety guarantees. That debate sits alongside other flashpoints in Mamdani’s early tenure, from hospital access rules that spare illegal immigrants while citizens face Medicaid limits to fights over public safety leadership.

In Quebec, a class-action suit filed in February 2025 by a Prime customer claimed warehouse closures pushed some deliveries to four to six days instead of the one- and two-day guarantee. A court ruled in May the case could proceed. Plaintiffs later said the worst disruption lasted about two months. Lawyer Saro Turner of Slater Vecchio said the company “got their act together and stopped the delays” after Canadian firm IntelCom took over. Amazon denies it closed the Quebec sites because of the union drive; even a tribunal finding would bring at most a fine and possible consumer backlash.

Mamdani’s broader record has already drawn internal and external heat, including Democratic Socialist fractures over Oct. 7 and the NYPD and criticism when he skipped the Brooklyn Columbus Day Parade and snubbed Queens organizers. National Democrats have also kept distance from some of his foreign-policy gambits, as when Hakeem Jeffries sidestepped the mayor’s push to arrest Netanyahu and join the ICC. The delivery bill now tests whether City Hall will prioritize ideology over the private payrolls that move packages and pay rent.

City Council allies have also clashed with the mayor over policing choices, including a Mamdani-backed socialist drive to oust NYPD chief Jessica Tisch, underscoring how labor and public-safety fights keep colliding in the same administration. For now the Delivery Protection Act remains unscheduled for a vote while Amazon’s warning sits on the table.

When politicians revise a business model from City Hall, the first people to feel it are the workers and small contractors who never got a vote.