It’s Amazon’s fall “Prime Big Deal Days,” promising deals on everything from robot vacuums to children’s coats to stocking stuffers. But these deals come at a high price.
Amazon is a behemoth, delivering over 1.6 million packages a day to homes across the United States. To get those packages the “last mile” to their destinations, Amazon enlists an army of hundreds of thousands of people: handlers who sort and dispatch the packages at fulfillment centers and drivers who deliver to doorsteps around the country. But though these workers are absolutely essential to this $2 trillion company, they struggle to make ends meet.
Drivers commonly report low wages, unpredictable schedules and lack of benefits such as paid sick leave.
Despite the company’s dependence on delivery drivers, Amazon doesn’t put these workers on their payroll, at least not directly. Instead, Amazon hires delivery drivers through one of two methods. One is through third-party “direct service partners.” These DSPs are technically independent of Amazon but largely or entirely dependent on the company to stay in business. The other is Amazon Flex, an online platform where drivers essentially sign up for “gigs” as delivery drivers. Even as the company sets strict requirements for delivery to meet its promise of Same Day and Next Day Delivery, it skirts responsibility for its drivers who actually solve the company’s “last mile” problem.
While this model has fueled Amazon’s rise to be the largest delivery company in the country, it has left delivery drivers in the dust.
I’ve co-authored a new report on the impact of this phenomenon, based on survey responses from drivers collected by the Shift Project at Harvard University’s Kennedy School. In these surveys, drivers commonly report low wages, unpredictable schedules and lack of benefits such as paid sick leave. At the same time, drivers report a high degree of control and surveillance over their movements. No wonder, then, that they are also likelier to quit.
The most common justification that Amazon offers for the gig workers model is that what workers give up in formal protections they gain in control over their own schedules. But that’s often not borne out in the experience of drivers. The Amazon Flex app often locks out drivers who are looking to change shifts or book extra shifts, and most of the highest-paying shifts are offered only a few days in advance. Once you do get a shift on the Flex app, you are tracked with eerie precision. Drivers receive a “standing” grade based on on-time deliveries and accuracy, but those grades don’t take into account long lines at pickup locations, parking challenges, locked buildings or GPS delays on the drivers’ phones — much less drivers’ getting to spend their time taking care of their own lives.
On a human level, too, the sales pitch behind “flexible” gig work is really that it should give people more time for the things they really want to do in life. But the Shift Project found that Amazon drivers can’t afford enough to eat or pay their utility bills. What good is flexibility if workers just have to use that extra time to get other jobs? This is further exacerbated by the risks workers absorb that would be Amazon’s responsibility if they were employees. In 2021, a study found that nearly 1 in 5 Amazon drivers suffered injuries on the job. But because of Amazon’s business model, it isn’t required to provide worker’s compensation for the drivers.
Amazon’s size and unchallenged market power give it near-total control over pricing and wage-setting.
To make matters worse, Amazon’s sheer size and market share as the largest home delivery retailer means how it treats its drivers affects standards across the industry. The Shift Project’s survey results show that Amazon’s drivers are paid about half as much as their UPS counterparts. And as our report lays out, UPS has seen a dramatic loss in market share, from 35% of delivery in 2015 to just over 20% in 2024.
Part of the reason Amazon treats its drivers this way is it thinks it can get away with it. Unfortunately, under our current regulatory system, to a certain extent it’s right. Amazon’s size and unchallenged market power give it near-total control over pricing and wage-setting. The Trump administration has systematically dismantled the agencies that should protect consumers and workers. The Labor Department, which enforces wage, health and safety laws, and which opened investigations of Amazon during the Biden administration, has been slashed by 20%. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which took action to regulate digital payments and worker surveillance through consumer reports that covered Amazon, has been gutted. Both agencies’ rules holding corporations accountable have been reversed, and lawsuits have been dropped or settled for slaps on the wrist. Just last month, the Federal Trade Commission settled a case brought against Amazon for making it too hard for people to cancel their Prime subscriptions. The $2.5 billion settlement is a drop in the bucket for Amazon. One of the advantages of size is being able to absorb penalties for bad behavior as a cost of doing business. It doesn’t have to be this way. In contrast to Amazon, UPS has, for over a century, hired its drivers as employees and had a unionized workforce. In fact, UPS is the world’s largest employer of Teamsters, demonstrating that delivery driving can be a good union job with wages that rise with seniority, job security, health insurance, paid time off and retirement benefits. In contrast, Amazon has cut ties with DSPs when their drivers choose to unionize (for purely nonunion-related reasons, the company insists). But under the Trump administration, big businesses that kiss the ring are rewarded. This means Amazon’s expansion will only continue and its power to dictate terms that ultimately hurt consumers and workers will grow. Doesn’t sound like such a great “deal” after all.
Julie Su
Julie Su is a senior fellow at The Century Foundation and previously served as acting secretary of labor in the Biden administration. 
