In recent weeks, NYC DSA members have joined with Teamsters from Local 804 and other community supporters to campaign in support of the Delivery Protection Act (DPA). As a DSA member and Teamster organizer, I have seen firsthand the ways this campaign to regulate Amazon can be a model for how the labor movement uses the infrastructure built by electoral work to push for pro-worker legislation across the country.
DSA and Teamsters Local 804 have been working together for years. Dozens of DSA members like Antonio Rosario have organized as shop floor activists and stewards at UPS. Other DSA members have led organizing drives at Amazon in New York and DSA members and elected officials have turned out at practice picket lines and strikes. Last year, Teamsters Local 804 was one of the first unions in the city to endorse Zohran Mamdani in the primary election for mayor.
The DPA was written by DSA City Council Member Tiffany Cabán with heavy input from Teamsters Local 804. The effort seeks to end the subcontracting of package delivery work within NYC by requiring companies like Amazon to directly employ their delivery workers (like at UPS). This would allow the city to hold companies directly accountable for the unsafe vans drivers are forced to drive, and provide drivers greater job stability by doing away with the third party contracting companies known as DSPs, which are frequently closed with a day’s notice. By taking away one of Amazon’s most potent union-busting tactics, the DPA would grant workers more stable ground on which to organize.
This year, Local 804 has lobbied City Council with worker testimonies, council member visits, and regular rallies at city hall, with DSA pushing turnout and supplementing support with a community member letter tool.
DSA’s campaign experience has proved invaluable in escalating pressure on holdout city councilors. We started with a DSA Call tool that 30+ Amazon workers used weekly to call a rotating list of 4-5 council member targets over the course of 4 weeks, followed by a DSA member phonebank of council member targets at the campaign kickoff event, and for multiple weeks after. Calling applied pressure, and the responses we got from office staff shifted from “Thank you for calling” to “Yes, we’re aware of the DPA and we are reading over the bill language.”
Knowing calls alone were insufficient, we made a plan to canvas in target districts, hoping to bring out our past electoral canvassers for a labor priority. We started in Rita Joseph’s DSA-dense Flatbush district on August 8th, focusing on voters who were Zohran 1s and 2s (most likely to have voted for him). We got a crew of 50+ volunteers who went on to knock 2300 doors, obtain 340 positive IDs, and get 302 commitments to send a digital letter to Joseph. At least 100 actually sent one. On August 10, Joseph signed on to the DPA. Majority Leader Sean Abreu, who was a primary phonebank target and a former co-sponsor of the bill, did so as well. This brought us to 34 cosponsors, a two-thirds supermajority.
Zohran Mamdani also publicly announced his support for the DPA, escalating the pressure on holdout city council members.
This momentum helped push volunteers to our next days of action on August 23 and September 5 which consisted of 4 simultaneous canvasses in the Bronx, Staten Island, Stuytown and South Brooklyn. Thousands of additional door knocks later, the DPA was up to 35 co-sponsors with target Council Member Kamillah Hanks of Staten Island signing on.
Amazon and corporate opponents have spent more than $5 million in lobbying against the bill. But the public pressure has battled back on the big money.
The campaign has created opportunities for DSA to build a stronger relationship with Teamsters Local 804 because union members and leaders are seeing DSA show up and throw down on the union’s priority bill. We are also making connections with other unions that are supporting the DPA and starting conversations about mobilizing DSA’s canvassing power for their legislative campaigns as well.
As someone who started working and organizing at Amazon before joining DSA, I’ve often felt frustrated with my chapter’s focus on electoralism, but the fact is that we haven’t always had a great way for volunteers to plug in to labor work aside from inviting them to organize or show up to sporadic pickets. The DPA campaign in NYC is a step in the right direction, and one that will need to be replicated in DSA chapters across the country where efforts to pass similar versions of the DPA are underway. The level of worker power we can muster is growing, but not yet enough to bring Amazon to the table; this behemoth needs to be cornered through legislation as well wherever possible. Get involved with labor work in your chapter and join the fight to regulate Amazon.
