While they may wear Amazon vests and drive Amazon-branded vans, the people who deliver Amazon packages to our doorsteps aren’t Amazon employees. They are contract workers, hired by one of thousands of AmazonDelivery Service Partners (DSPs) to complete last-mile deliveries. Others are independent contractors — think Uber for packages — who drive their own vehicles under a program called Amazon Flex.
“With transportation being often outsourced, drivers enjoy far fewer protections currently,” said Craig Austin, a logistics and supply chain management professor at Florida International University.
One protection drivers can lack came into focus last week, when Amazon terminated the Durham contract of a delivery partner named CNC Logistics, affecting all 75 of its Triangle employees. Amazon routinely ends delivery partnerships, canceling at least a handful of deals in recent months across multiple states. “We may never know why Amazon voids some contracts,” Austin said. “But we can safely deduce it is because of increasing costs of some of these DSP entities along with worsening on-time deliveries and customer service.”…