By Ryan Schwach
Nearly 500 Queens workers were laid off after Amazon ended contracts with their employers without providing proper notice, the Teamsters union alleged in a new federal complaint.
The Teamsters filed the complaint with the Department of Labor, claiming the billion-dollar conglomerate did not give the legally required notice to workers before they cut ties with the third-party delivery companies they work for, effectively laying them off.
“One day you wake up and you go to work, and you know you’re going there to provide for your family, and then they tell you that in 12 days you’re not going to have a job anymore,” former driver and union organizer Maria Degante said through a translator.
Degante, a Forest Hills resident, worked for two different delivery service partners, small businesses that Amazon uses to contract drivers for local routes. Both lost their contracts with Amazon, and Degante was laid off each time.
“You’re thinking ahead about whether you’re going to make rent, whether you need to go and start applying for unemployment,” she said. “The family itself gets destabilized because now you know you don’t have that security that you’re going to have a paycheck in the future.”
Degante worked as a driver for one of Amazon’s delivery service partners before being laid off. Drivers at DSPs wear Amazon uniforms, drive Amazon trucks and are managed by the company, but are not granted the same protections as Amazon employees since the company does not claim them as employees.
The third-party drivers have complained about heavy workloads, little pay, poor working conditions and vindictive practices from Amazon.
DSPs are currently the subject of a bill sponsored by Queens Councilmember Tiffany Cabán that would rein in Amazon and other companies’ use of the third-party drivers.
Even though Amazon doesn’t directly contract the workers, the Teamsters union claims in its complaint filed this week that when Amazon cancels its contract with the drivers’ employers, it is essentially forcing the DSPs to shutter or lay off workers.
The union says that Amazon is often the DSPs only client, something often required in their contracts, so when Amazon ends the relationship, the company goes under.
“Our research and public records indicate that Amazon has knowingly induced and caused mass layoffs and closures through termination of contracts with its DSPs, violating the rights of workers to receive adequate notice or be compensated for the related deficiencies,” the complaint read.
The union further claimed that when Amazon has cut ties with the companies, effectively firing drivers, it did not give enough notice under the New York WARN Act, which requires at least a 90-day notice for mass layoffs.
This was the case for five DSPs in Queens, three of which operated out of the large DBK 4 warehouse in Maspeth, between 2023 and 2025. Around 492 workers were laid off when Amazon cut the five contracts.
In the five cases, the most notice Amazon gave workers before they cut the contract was 16 days. In one case involving Cornucopia Logistics, Amazon didn’t tell workers until six days after the contract was severed in September 2025.