It's time Amazon played by the same rules as everyone else [video]

Fair enough! I watched the video again and still dont understand what the problem is or what's being solved, but yes - there's the act!

It connects the dots through - Amazon seems to be claiming their drivers are exempt from something due to being contractors, and this bill will enforce those undefined somethings to be enforced.

> This bill would require operators of certain warehouses and storage facilities from which goods are delivered to final consumers in the City to obtain a business license from the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection. This bill would set forth the conditions of such license, which would include safety, training and employment requirements. This bill would also set forth enforcement options, including those available to the City and to workers.

The bill text itself seems to be more about hiring / firing practices than trucks.

> You could say the same about Trump, and no, this is not supposed to be a compliment.

That's true, both Mamdani and Trump are very effective politicians. One can disagree with either or both of their positions, but that doesn't mean that they're not good at it.

The way this stuff works is Amazon requires them they need to get X amount of liability insurance to even be a subcontractor. Amazon requires proof.

The government has its own laws on things like minimum workers compensation insurance.

So the subcontractors are insured.

> Subcontracting is a thing. It's not a bad thing on its own.

I wouldn't say subcontracting is a bad thing always. It depends on reason for subcontracting and in this case, I'd call it bad since subcontracting is clearly to avoid liability for what is critical business function.

>Is "Joe's delivery company" not already required to have liability insurance?

Yes they are. It is enough? Not always. States are always trying to balance allowing protecting general public but not strangling small businesses. It doesn't always work out.

>Do we think that a delivery company delivering the same package for Amazon vs. FedEx vs. Mary's Flowers Inc. vs. NYC Movers Inc. should have a different amount of liability? (e.g., if that delivery driver injures a pedestrian, should we require that NYC Movers Inc. covers fewer costs than Amazon)?

This law would impact all those companies if they move their drivers into subcontractor. Amazon is getting called out because they are BIGGEST users of this system but no, they are not only ones.

Amazon has already consolidated that power. They’ve just done it in a way where they are able to shirk some liability and maintenance costs onto their employees.

They’ve problem is that most of these are not really small businesses, in the same way that most Uber drivers aren’t really a small business.

They don’t drive a generic truck, they drive an Amazon branded truck, often an Amazon financed truck, often a vehicle specific to Amazon deliveries.

Can they use the Amazon-truck they financed from Amazon for non-Amazon deliveries?

Race to bottom dynamic

That's what i'm confused about, no one is holding a gun to the subcontractor's heads forcing them to do the impossible

It would probably make the most sense for Amazon to scale out their on-road infra as drone delivery capacity (and much more slowly, the regulatory environment) is hammered out but I’m personally leaning towards the org going for a more practical response that ends up routing most packages through USPS instead.

I said the governor of the state, not a state. Why you jumped to some inane example that has nothing to do with the conversation is beyond me.

By definition, the governor of NY is responsible for more people than the mayor of NYC, yet more people are familiar with the mayor and might not even be able to name the governor.

Why are we applauding under-funding the public pension system for temporary TikTok points? If that's folks' definition of bare minimum the city is in for a lot of pain.

They might not be prefect but they have a better track record than social media commentators. If you were going by the sentiment on HN or reddit, you'd thought Kamala would have won by a landslide.

Modern communists are such reactionaries that they can't even see the value in decimating the petite-bourgeoisie population. Sad.

Others can cause damage, but your odds of being hit by an Amazon driver are dramatically higher than most other companies because of the number of drivers they run.

They found a sort of loophole in the law. It's supposed to be self-regulating in a way, because being enormous means a lot of drivers and a lot of accidents so businesses get very picky about who is allowed to drive and how they drive. That falls apart when there's a bajillion drivers but they're made up of thousands of separate "delivery contractors" running fly-by-night businesses that the owners fully expect to die at some point and so don't leave any cash in and don't put improvements into.

E.g. I hear Walmart's trucking side is actually fairly nice and difficult to get into. They pay relatively well for the work and it's a cushier kind of trucking (more local, I think), which means everyone wants to work there and they have exacting standards for their drivers. They don't want insurance payouts.

Amazon seems notably different because it is _weirdly_ common to hear a story that goes something like "Amazon driver gets arrested for driving double the speed limit while high". The kind of thing that would trigger fleet-wide drug tests at most businesses, but is sort of a normal hum over at Amazon.

Yeah, but this time it was. And if it is, they should be on the hook, yes?

Does Amazon require the contractor to have the contractors drivers wear Amazon branded vests?

What if the DSP is a single-person company? Then the DSP and the driver are the same person. In that case, is it Amazon or the DSP requiring the driver to wear Amazon livery?

This is why they want to fix the paper to say Amazon is making them do it.

I wrote like 10 comments that engaged seriously in this discussion... and haven't really gotten much back except comments that allude to conspiracy. There are people who start with "of course Amazon is evil and they just want to do evil things" and work backwards from there... I tend to start from a different direction of "I get packages quickly, and it's huge value add to my life; lots of people have good paying jobs delivering these packages - and lots of new small businesses started up to do this last mile delivery - and that's good" ...... and if you start there, then I'm just more skeptical of random new laws to fix something where nobody has made a concrete case for actual, real life harm that exists today...

my view is that the burden is on the people making up new rules to show their rules are solving concrete actual harms... not just hand wave and say "well obviously Amazon's a [evil scare tone] TRILLION DOLLAR COMPANY" and let that be the end of the argument