Featured 2026-09-23 Nantina Vgontzas and Sanjay Pinto

Caption: Deputy Mayor of New York City for Economic Justice Julie Su, Commissioner of the NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection Sam Levine, and delivery workers celebrate efforts to expand gig worker protections, January 2026.

Credit: NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP)

In Amazon’s vast logistics empire, warehouse workers and delivery drivers incur frequent injuries amid stringent performance monitoring and evaluation.1 The best data we have indicate that many workers are interested in organizing to improve their conditions, yet the same infrastructure used to relentlessly boost productivity is deployed to suppress collective action.2 Refusing to come to the table even when workers unionize, Amazon is looking to have traditional legal pathways for expressing worker voice abolished altogether—and its algorithmic systems given free rein.3

Still, closer inspection reveals stirrings of dissent. Across Amazon’s global network, workers aware of their strategic position in the distribution process are contesting speedup and discipline.4 Through their mastery of government regulations and the company’s own operating procedures, they are challenging productivity write-ups, refusing unsafe work, and teaching their peers how to navigate Amazon’s increasingly automated managerial systems.5 They are developing a knowledge base that prefigures more democratic forms of shop-floor governance.6

Not only are these emergent practices of peer education crucial for strategies of labor renewal, but they can inform a parallel question that has gained traction in the last year—the question of mass governance.7 Amid a deepening global crisis of liberal democracy, the election of a socialist mayor in New York City (NYC) has generated interest in not only representing the interests of working-class people but, moreover, expanding opportunities for them to govern the city their labor makes run. Thus far, mass governance initiatives have focused on cultivating engagement at the neighborhood and borough levels, such as through rental ripoff hearings and participatory budgeting assemblies.8 Meanwhile, the workplace remains an underexplored site. Though the Mamdani administration has begun expanding state capacities to enforce labor standards, less attention has been placed on the role that workers can play in this process.9

[T]he election of a socialist mayor in New York City has generated interest in not only representing the interests of working-class people but, moreover, expanding opportunities for them to govern the city their labor makes run.

This essay builds a framework of mass governance out of workers’ daily struggles on the shop floor, focusing on peer education as a dual organizing and policy tool. Versed in legal rights, work processes, and relational dynamics, peer educators are uniquely positioned to cultivate shared insights about the harms stemming from employers’ exploitative practices and facilitate tactical experimentation aimed at eradicating these harms together with strategic reflection around transforming the power relations that give rise to them. We term this mode of engagement mass worker education: democratizing the production of knowledge in service of democratizing the production of goods and services. Recognizing the importance of intellectual exchange and political deliberation for worker empowerment, this framework envisions workers as not only enforcing labor standards but shaping them as well.

Following on the Mamdani administration’s expansion of resources for the NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP), the essay considers leveraging this enhanced capacity to institutionalize a role for peer educators in implementing worker protections and building workplace organization.10 As an exemplary case, we explore the idea of NYC establishing a mass worker education program in parcel shipping operations across the area. Administered in partnership with unions and community groups, the program would build training capacity among a corps of warehouse workers and parcel delivery drivers,11 strengthening their role in enforcing new laws that address harmful industry practices and cultivating broader cultures of workplace safety. We also consider forms of partnership between NYC and New York State that could expand the scope and extend reach of this worker training and legal co-enforcement with increasingly non-union workforces. Last, we discuss how such a program could empower workers to participate in mass assemblies shaping policy development around data collection, deployment of new technologies, and other pressing concerns, helping pave the way toward mass sectoral governance.

Labor Standards Enforcement and the Role of Peer Education
Government agencies around the country are building partnerships with worker organizations to enforce labor standards. Drawing on the knowledge that workers have about their industries and specific worksites, these efforts in co-enforcement have achieved important gains in addressing legal violations.12

At Amazon’s San Bernardino International Airport (KSBD) air hub in Southern California, for instance, workers organizing with Inland Empire Amazon Workers United have collected and shared information about the facility’s weak safety protections during extreme summer temperatures, leading to several government citations.13 This work comes on the heels of over a decade of worker education and organizing that has raised consciousness around heat safety in the Inland Empire’s booming warehousing sector and contributed to the passage of statewide heat illness prevention standards.14

In response to another acute threat faced by workers—the rapid deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies—California, New York, and other states have also begun enforcing new quota transparency laws in the warehousing sector. In 2024, the California Labor Commission fined Amazon almost $6 million for violating Assembly Bill 701, which requires warehousing employers to provide written notice of quotas on which they are evaluated.15 Here, too, worker knowledge and organization proved crucial to enforcement, with workers at ONT8 (Optical Network Terminal) and ONT9 fulfillment centers sharing information with the Labor Commissioner’s Office under the auspices of the California Strategic Enforcement Partnership.16

Increasingly, Amazon is challenging these efforts at enforcing quota standards. In California, the company has appealed the Labor Commission’s citations by arguing that it does not use pre-determined quotas to evaluate workers, while in New York, workers report that management has been able to sidestep new quota provisions by evaluating workers on the basis of their relative productivity—a tactic that makes injured and pregnant workers especially vulnerable to heightened work intensity.17

In maintaining its de facto quota system, Amazon insists that the data it collects on workflows and then uses to train computational systems constitutes proprietary information. Even in jurisdictions with strong data protections like Germany, the company refuses to give works councils (elected workplace bodies that represent employees’ interests to management) access to datasets and algorithms managed by engineers often hundreds or thousands of miles away from the worksite—the very measures that would enable frontline workers to intervene more directly in the technical processes that shape their working conditions.18

Government agencies around the country are building partnerships with worker organizations to enforce labor standards.

In challenging the separation that capitalist production engenders between the conception and execution of labor, peer education offers a potential antidote.19 At a recent workshop, workers from different Amazon divisions came together to analyze the impacts of AI and explore strategies for expanding worker voice in its design and deployment.20 As a collective exercise in knowledge production, the gathering showed what may be possible if workers are empowered to disrupt hierarchical information flows in the workplace and policymaking arenas.

Highlighting worker knowledge for policymaking purposes suggests wider implications concerning the intersection of labor renewal and mass governance. For the most part, legislation aimed at supporting efforts to revitalize the labor movement (e.g., the Protecting the Right to Organize [PRO] Act) has been focused on making it easier for workers to organize. As necessary as these measures are for expanding the associational capacities of the working class, they are insufficient for expanding its governing capacities. Unions serve as a potentially politicizing force within the workplace, but they largely operate within legal frameworks that regularize collective bargaining while muting shop-floor contestation.21 These frameworks not only enshrine capitalist control over production but also shift the task of governing away from workers’ daily struggles. Workers can try to influence the policy process either through union representatives appointed to tripartite structures or by lobbying elected officials.

Mass worker education challenges this distinction, emphasizing the agency of workers in more directly shaping and enforcing their rights on the shop floor. We draw inspiration from the factory councils of interwar Europe, experiments with autogestion (self-management) in decolonized Africa and Asia, and the cordones industriales (industrial belts) and comunas (communes) at the heart of socialist projects in Latin America.22 More immediately, we look to occupational health movements that used peer education to expand popular sovereignty under a range of authoritarian politics of early neoliberalism. During the Brazilian military dictatorship, for instance, metalworkers used their firsthand knowledge of the sector’s acute injury crisis to expose the state’s cosmetic fixes, laying the groundwork for a disability rights movement that made key legislative advances after the fall of the junta.23 In the Indian state of Chhattisgarh, mineworkers in the 1980s partnered with health professionals to train “barefoot doctors” and establish a people’s hospital that broke down hierarchies of expertise in the health sector.24 Meanwhile, during the Reaganite offensive in the United States, worker movements within the United Auto Workers (UAW) and Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers Union (OCAW) used peer education to link health and safety organizing to broader questions of environmental justice.25

Presently, we see this legacy extended by Amazon workers building power across the company’s global network. Through meetings organized by Amazon Workers International and other networks, worker representatives exchange information about hazardous work and bring this knowledge home to share with coworkers on the shop floor.26 Moreover, in refusing unsafe work during the pandemic and other emergencies, Amazon workers have been articulating a common vision of making company operations safer for themselves and their communities.27

These examples illustrate the openings that exist for workers to build shop-floor power and influence policy even in challenging conditions. Through spaces of collective experimentation and reflection, workers can confront the root of the harms they face—power relations embodied in the production process itself.

Instituting Mass Worker Education in NYC
In NYC, the Office of Labor Policy & Standards (OLPS), a division of the DCWP, has undertaken important legal enforcement measures in recent years.28 For example, following the 2010 passage of the New York Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights, OLPS convened focus groups with nannies, cleaners, and home health aides across the city to discuss violations and other issues.29 A parallel set of efforts led to the 2017 formation of the We Rise Nanny Training program, through which a coalition of domestic worker organizations have partnered with the Worker Institute at Cornell University in developing a peer education program centering around rights awareness, workforce development, and organizing skills.30 The coalition has since expanded the program to cover other sectors, training hundreds of nannies, cleaners, and home health aides, as well as day laborers and farmworkers. New research shows that NYC, with its strong enforcement of the Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights, has seen major improvements in job quality indicators such as overtime relative to the rest of the state.31

These experiences highlight the importance of not only responding to legal violations after they have occurred but also promoting organizing strategies that shift larger workplace cultures. A mass worker education program could support legal co-enforcement while also equipping workers with resources to exercise greater control over their conditions, addressing shop-floor challenges before they become acute.

To illustrate what such a program could look like, we return to the example of warehousing and parcel delivery. With its rapid expansion amid the ecommerce boom, the industry has attracted growing public concern over its impacts on workers, residents, and the environment. Amazon’s invasive deployments of AI and other digital technologies have received particular scrutiny, spurring wider discussion among consumers and workers across a variety of industries. Building on existing legislation and organizing in New York, a program of mass worker education could strengthen governance of warehousing and parcel delivery and serve as a model for other industries.

[T]he state and city could follow the example of work-sharing agreements between government agencies, establishing co-enforcement powers between NYS Department of Labor (DOL) and NYC DCWP that promote accountability for serial law breakers and discourage harmful employer behaviors.

Legislation passed at the state level over the past five years regulates production quotas and mandates that employers implement injury reduction plans.32 In 2025, worker and advocacy groups in New Yorkers for a Fair Economy (NYFE)—a coalition convened by the Alliance for a Greater New York (ALIGN)—turned attention to the question of how to implement this legislation effectively. Amazon Labor Union-International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 1 (ALU-IBT Local 1), representing 5,000 workers at the JFK8 fulfillment center in Staten Island, focused on raising awareness of these laws as part of its safety campaign.33 Following several worker summits and stakeholder meetings, ALU-IBT Local 1 partnered with the Athena Coalition and National Employment Law Project (NELP) to pilot a training around laws relevant to advancing health and safety in the workplace, body and hazard mapping, and formation of workplace safety committees.34 With support from the Consortium for Worker Education (CWE), ALU-IBT Local 1 has carried out additional training with shop-floor leaders and is building a training center near JFK8.

At the city level, the NYFE coalition is currently mobilizing in support of the Delivery Protection Act (DPA), introduced by NYC Council Member Tiffany Cabán in September 2025. The legislation would require operators of last-mile delivery facilities to obtain business licenses from DCWP and directly hire delivery drivers (including those who have unionized with Teamsters Local 804 at Amazon delivery facilities DBK4 and DBK1 in Queens) rather than misclassifying them as independent contractors.35 Importantly, the legislation would require employers to grant access to an independent certified organization to conduct safety and rights training with workers and managers. Drawing on a recent study commissioned by the NYC Comptroller’s office that shows an increase in traffic crashes and injuries in areas near last-mile delivery facilities like the ones in Maspeth, Queens, advocates argue that promoting the safety of workers would also help to safeguard residents.36 “The impact goes far beyond us,” according to Luc Rene, an Amazon Teamster based at DBK4. “The endless churn of underpaid drivers creates congestion, pollution, and wear on city streets.”37 If the bill passes, DCWP could partner with members of the NYFE coalition to develop a co-enforcement strategy that builds on work around recent state laws.

[A]n infrastructure of mass worker education could amplify the capacity of frontline workers to meaningfully shape policy.

Focusing on the training provision, we draw on an insight common among many evaluations of union education programs, which shows that workers more readily incorporate lessons received through peer education as opposed to other forms of pedagogy.38 A particularly instructive example comes from a peer education program developed to address sexual harassment and violence in California’s janitorial industry, where a coalition of labor and anti-violence organizations created a framework for anti-sexual harassment training by peer educators, known as promotoras, for janitorial workers across the state.39 The coalition, which included worker leaders, saw that managers and supervisors often enable or enact harmful behaviors themselves, and determined that trained janitors—particularly survivors of sexual violence—were best positioned to educate their peers about relevant rights and strategies. Coalition members went on to support the creation of the Ya Basta Center in Los Angeles, which has trained hundreds of janitor promotoras to provide peer training in workplaces across California. Drawing on trauma-informed methods originally developed by the East Los Angeles Women’s Center, janitor promotoras facilitate spaces where workers can establish the trust needed to share their stories. These healing spaces have given janitors the confidence to stand with each other in the workplace and speak up against harassment, often joining fights around other issues like wage theft as well.40

In New York, collaborating with DCWP and with support from organizations such as CWE, members of the NYFE coalition could set up a training program akin to the promotora program in California. Focusing initially on enforcement of the DPA, the program could prepare a core of last-mile delivery drivers and warehouse workers—including those engaging with local unions—to deliver training around issues of misclassification and safety addressed by the legislation. Like the promotora model, employers across this industry would be required to grant access to peer educators, enabling the program to cover non-union workforces as well. Through program evaluation, the city could develop an evidence base showing whether and how peer training impacts worker awareness of legal rights and the sense of efficacy workers have in exercising these rights. Drawing on the city’s increasing agency capacities as well as its growing movement of labor and community groups targeting Amazon’s abuses,41 such work could evolve into the development of a training center like the Ya Basta Center.

Over time, building on emergent city-state partnerships around childcare and other issues, a peer education program could train a corps of warehouse workers and parcel delivery drivers in promoting awareness and enforcement of the right to organize as well as health and safety laws that Amazon and other employers have been known to violate. Given employers’ use of tech-enabled worker surveillance strategies to enforce unsustainable work rates and impede worker responses, peer educators could draw connections between these individual and collective forms of disempowerment. By bringing together workers from different parts of the logistics sector, a mass worker education program could generate broader knowledge about the infrastructures undergirding harmful practices and foster dialogue about strategies for building worker voice across the supply chain. Moreover, linking worker and community safety, the program could also generate support for other legislative efforts.42

As big tech and other corporate actors seek greater control over nearly every aspect of economic, social, and political life, the Mamdani administration has an historic opportunity to create agile policy mechanisms that can respond to this rapidly shifting terrain—moving from the shop floor up.

A partnership between the city and state could assist with the development of this program in multiple respects. First, Albany could generate revenue for the peer education training center by imposing a “robot tax” on Amazon and other corporations investing in high levels of automation.43 Second, implementing and refining a peer education program at the city level would serve as a test case before expanding its reach across New York State. In California, labor and anti-violence groups leveraged a rich movement ecosystem in Los Angeles, the historic birthplace of the Justice for Janitors campaign, toward establishing the Ya Basta Center as a base for strengthening statewide rights enforcement. A peer education training center based in NYC could serve a similar function.44 Last, and most ambitiously, the state and city could follow the example of work-sharing agreements between government agencies,45 establishing co-enforcement powers between NYS Department of Labor (DOL) and NYC DCWP that promote accountability for serial law breakers and discourage harmful employer behaviors. For instance, current state law mandates annual worksite evaluations by state-appointed industrial hygienists (government officials who identify and control workplace hazards to protect public health). Employers are then required to take concrete steps to address whatever ergonomic risk factors are identified in the evaluations, but it has not been specified what steps employers would need to take to comply. Establishing co-enforcement powers between NYS DOL and NYC DCWP would enable the city government to work with unions and other partners in establishing participatory structures.46

From the Shop Floor to the Assembly
Recent years have seen numerous proposals calling for sectoral governance as a labor renewal strategy in New York and other parts of the country, including wage boards and tripartite bargaining structures.47 In their implementation, however, such developments often have been relatively detached from and at times contradictory to grassroots efforts to grow worker power.48 This disconnect weakens legal enforcement, hampers ongoing policy development that could be responsive to evolving worker needs and concerns, and limits possibilities for the kind of consciousness-raising work that can engender positive feedback loops between policy and organizing. This separation also constrains the capacity of workers to build direct associational power vis-à-vis employers, clients, and other holders of economic power.

In institutionalizing channels for workers to promote labor standards enforcement and shift broader workplace cultures, an infrastructure of mass worker education could amplify the capacity of frontline workers to meaningfully shape policy. Specifically, peer education could build on workers’ existing job-related knowledge to deepen understandings of industry dynamics and relevant policy debates; seed the formation of what ALU-IBT Local 1 leaders have called “tech governance councils,” which would combine strategic reflection on shop-floor organizing with proposals for enhancing worker voice in technology deployment; and facilitate recruitment of workers into mass sectoral assemblies. These assemblies could provide a forum for workers from different work sites, occupations, and job titles to convene around developing citywide organizing and policy strategies. Such assemblies could deepen member engagement in areas where unions already have a foothold and provide a space for unions to continue deepening their coalitional relationships with other communities. Critically, amid continued employer attacks on legal rights to free association, mass assemblies could build networks of support for collective action in areas with little or no union density as well.

We end by returning to our opening vignette of Amazon workers resisting acute forms of digital surveillance. Amid growing interest in the regulation of data collection and computational systems, the framework we have proposed would anchor shop-floor governance practices, like the efforts of Amazon workers to teach each other how to navigate the company’s surveillance systems, in the insights of workers who encounter these systems daily. Moreover, in establishing a consistent feedback loop from the point of production to sectoral assemblies and the halls of state power, the policy process would be infused with ongoing experimentation, reflection, and refinement. As big tech and other corporate actors seek greater control over nearly every aspect of economic, social, and political life, the Mamdani administration has an historic opportunity to create agile policy mechanisms that can respond to this rapidly shifting terrain—moving from the shop floor up.

Notes

1. U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, “The Injury-Productivity Trade-Off: How Amazon’s Obsession with Speed Creates Uniquely Dangerous Warehouses,” 118th Congress, 2nd Session, 2024; Irene Tung, Nicole Marquez, and Paul K. Sonn, “Amazon’s Outsized Role: The Injury Crisis in U.S. Warehouses and a Policy Roadmap to Protect Workers,” National Employment Law Project, 2024; Matt Day, “Amazon Worker Injuries More Widespread than Thought, Study Says,” Bloomberg, October 25, 2023; Annie Palmer, “NJ Sues Amazon for Allegedly Discriminating against Thousands of Pregnant Warehouse Workers,” CNBC, October 22, 2025; Karen Hamilton, “Delivery Drivers Sue Amazon for Being Forced to Pee in Bottles,” Forbes, May 23, 2023.

2. Beth Gutelius and Sanjay Pinto, “Pain Points: Data on Work Intensity, Monitoring, and Health at Amazon Warehouses,” University of Illinois Chicago, Center for Urban Economic Development, 2023; Teke Wiggins, “Weaponizing the Workplace: How Algorithmic Management Shaped Amazon’s Antiunion Campaign in Bessemer, Alabama,” Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World 11 (2025): 1-27; Tamara L. Lee, Maite Tapia, Carla Lima Aranzaes, Salil R. Sapre, Spencer Shimek, Sanjay Pinto, and Alí R. Bustamante, “The Militarization of Employment Relations: Racialized Surveillance and Worker Control in Amazon Fulfillment Centers,” Work and Occupations 52 (2024): 492-528.

3. Noam Scheiber, “Amazon Argues Labor Board is Unconstitutional,” New York Times, February 15, 2024.

4. Kim Moody, “The End of Lean Production and What Lies Ahead for Labor,” Capital & Class 49 (2025): 575-96.

5. Yackisha Nebot Lopez, “We Closed JFK8 After a Sewage Pipe Burst, One of Many Victories for Amazon Teamsters This Year,” Inequality.Org, September 25, 2025; Amazon Teamsters [@amazonteamsters], “Amazon Workers Fight against Unfair Discipline Practices,” TikTok, February 7, 2025.

6. By “shop floor” we mean an area where workers create value. Traditionally, the term has been used to denote the factory floor, but we expand it to include the classroom, operating room, hotel room, restaurant, carwash, taxi, truck, bus, office, and other work settings of contemporary society.

7. Gianpaolo Baiocchi, Sumathy Kumar, and Celina Su, “Towards Mass Governance in New York City: A Framework and Road-Map,” NYU Urban Democracy Lab Working Paper, 2026; Gabriel Hetland and Bhaskar Sunkara, “Zohran Needs to Create Popular Assemblies,” Jacobin, December 22, 2025.

8. NYC Office of the Mayor, “Mayor Mamdani Announces Formation of ‘Rental Ripoff’ Hearings,” New York City, January 6, 2026; Celina Su, “Towards a ‘PB+’: Leveraging Participatory Budgeting to Amplify Impact and Mass Governance,” NYU Urban Democracy Lab Working Paper, 2026.

9. NYC Office of the Mayor, “Mayor Mamdani Announces $5 Million Settlement, Reinstatement of as Many as 10,000 Wrongfully Deactivated Food Delivery Workers,” January 30, 2026; NYC Office of the Mayor, “Mayor Mamdani Announces Major Expansion of Protected Time Off for 4.3 Million Workers and New Data-Driven Enforcement Strategy,” February 20, 2026.

10. In May 2026, the Mayor’s office committed to increasing DCWP staff from forty positions to 180 positions over the next three years.

11. Typically legislation addresses warehousing and parcel delivery as distinct sectors, but given the educational and organizing benefits of warehouse workers and drivers from the same facilities analyzing their conditions together, we discuss both categories here as a unified industry.

12. Janice Fine and Jennifer Gordon, “Strengthening Labor Standards Enforcement through Partnerships with Workers Organizations,” Politics and Society 38, no. 4 (2010): 552-85; Janice Fine, “Enforcing Labor Standards in Partnership with Civil Society: Can Co-enforcement Succeed Where the State Alone Has Failed?” Politics and Society 45, no. 3 (2017): 359-388; Linda Delp and Kevin Riley, “Worker Engagement in the Health and Safety Regulatory Arena under Changing Models of Worker Representation,” Labor Studies Journal 40, no. 1 (2015): 32-53.

13. Warehouse Worker Resource Center, “Amazon Cited for Serious Health and Safety Violations at San Bernardino Warehouse” [press release], February 21, 2024.

14. Nantina Vgontzas, “Social Need Unionism at Amazon” [working paper], 2026.

15. State of California Department of Industrial Relations, “Labor Commissioner Cites Amazon Nearly $6 Million for Violating California’s Warehouse Quotas Law” [press release], June 18, 2024; Jeanne Kuang, “California Hits Amazon with Fines under Warehouse Worker Law,” CalMatters, June 18, 2024.

16. National Employment Law Project, “Advocacy in Action: Movement Gains Momentum to Hold Amazon Accountable for Harms to Warehouse Workers,” February 28, 2025.

17. Amazon, however, appealed the citations, arguing that it does not use pre-determined quotas to evaluate workers. National Employment Law Project, “Advocacy in Action: Movement Gains Momentum to Hold Amazon Accountable for Harms to Warehouse Workers,” February 28, 2025; Warehouse Worker Resource Center, “Amazon Cited for $6 Million for Labor Violations” [press release], June 18, 2024.

18. Nantina Vgontzas, “Amazon’s Multisectoral Shopfloor” [working paper], 2026.

19. Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (Monthly Review Press, 1974).

20. The September 2025 workshop “On the Move” convened workers, organizers, and technologists to confront the expanding role of AI in the transit, taxi, and logistics sectors. Through sectoral breakout sessions and cross-sectoral assemblies, participants assessed emerging AI harms and co-developed actionable approaches for governing these technologies in ways that uphold worker rights, safety, and autonomy. The event was facilitated by Sarah Fox (Carnegie Mellon University), Lilly Irani (University of California, San Diego), and Nantina Vgontzas (City University of New York), with support from the National Science Foundation’s Responsible Design, Development, and Deployment of Technologies program. Participants Robert Moore and Jordan Soreff, both of whom work at Amazon, recently reflected on topics discussed at the workshop in an interview with Amazon Teamsters Division Director Randy Korgan, “Amazon’s AI Is Always Watching,” Shut it Down! The Amazon Teamsters Podcast, January 28, 2026.

21. Nantina Vgontzas, “Toward Realignment: Big Tech, Organized Labor, and the Politics of the Future of Work,” Labor Studies Journal 48, no. 3 (2023): 267-275.

22. Dario Azzellini and Immanuel Ness, eds., Ours to Master and to Own: Workers’ Control from the Commune to the Present (Haymarket Books, 2011).

23. Sofie Alessandra Williams, “Corpos marginalizados e visões radicais de saúde do trabalhador, 1971-1982 [Marginalized Bodies and Radical Visions of Workers’ Health in Greater São Paulo, 1971-1982],” guest lecture in “Deslocamentos, trabalho e experiências [Displacement, Labor, and Experiences],” Federal University of São Paulo, Guarulhos Campus, December 2, 2024.

24. Apoorv Khare and Rohit Varman, “Shaheed Hospital: Alternative Institution, Ideology, and Social Movement,” in Alternative Organizations in India: Undoing Boundaries, ed. Devi Vijay and Rohit Varman (Cambridge University Press, 2018).

25. Josiah Rector, “Environmental Justice at Work: The UAW, the War on Cancer, and the Right to Equal Protection from Toxic Hazards in Postwar America,” The Journal of American History 101, no. 2 (2014): 480-502; Jacqueline Kurtz, Thomas Robins, and M. Shork, “An Evaluation of Peer and Professional Trainers in a Union-Based Occupational Health Training Program,” Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine 39, no. 7 (1997): 661-71; Craig Slatin, “Health and Safety Organizing: OCAW’s Worker-to-Worker Health and Safety Training Program,” New Solutions 11, no. 4 (2001): 349-74. In the case of the OCAW, discussions facilitated by the union’s innovative education department informed the development of just transition as a policy idea addressing the dislocation of industrial workers. See Josiah Rector, “‘A Bill of Rights for Plant Closings’: The OCAW, the Superfund for Workers, and the Origins of the Just Transition Concept” [working paper], 2026.

26. Marta Rozmysłowicz, “Toward a Rights-Based Framework for Occupational Safety and Health in the AI-Driven Workplace” [working paper], 2026.

27. Nantina Vgontzas, “Amazon After Bessemer,” Boston Review, April 21, 2021.

28. This has included engaging worker and community groups to spread rights awareness and identify violations, including Workers Justice Project (WJP), Los Deliveristas Unidos (LDU), Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York (ROC-NY), and the New York Nail Salon Workers Training School established by the New York Nail Salon Workers Association (NYNSWA) in partnership with the New York Committee for Occupational Safety & Health (NYCOSH) and Adhikaar. NYC Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO, “DCWP and WJP Distribute Checks to More than 150 Relay Delivery Workers,” November 21, 2025; NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, “Department of Consumer and Worker Protection and Restaurant Opportunities Centers United to Educate Restaurant Workers about Their Rights,” June 21, 2019; NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection [formerly Department of Consumer Affairs], “Department of Consumer Affairs Partners with the Nail Salon Workers Association to Educate Salon Workers about their Rights,” March 11, 2019.

29. Ruth Milkman, “Making Paid Care Work Visible: Findings from Focus Groups with New York City Home Care Aides, Nannies, and House Cleaners,” NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection [formerly Department of Consumer Affairs], Office of Labor Policy and Standards, March 2018.

30. Zoë West, Ketchel Carey, and Anne Marie Brady, “Domestic Workers Rising: An Evaluation of the We Rise Peer Training Program,” Cornell ILR Worker Institute, 2024. The coalition includes the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA) and the NDWA/We Dream in Black—NYC Chapters, Carroll Gardens Association (CGA), Adhikaar, Beyond Care Cooperative, Community Resource Center (CRC), Nanny Bee Cooperative, and Rhiza Collective.

31. Emily Wright, Paulina López González, Luis Nuñez, and Kelly Gannon, “Enacting Domestic Worker Bills of Rights: A Quasi-Experimental Analysis of Impacts on Domestic Workers’ Working Hours and Earnings,” New Solutions: A Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health Policy 35, no. 4 (2025): 392-409.

32. The 2022 Warehouse Worker Protection Act (WWPA) addresses the harmful effects of undisclosed production quotas, and the 2024 Warehouse Worker Injury Reduction Act (WWIRA), which mandates that employers implement an injury reduction program in consultation with workers.

33. Amazon Labor Union-IBT Local 1, “Safety Bill of Rights,” May 2025.

34. U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, “U.S. Department of Labor Announces Settlement with Amazon Requiring Corporate-Wide Ergonomic Measures at Facilities Across the Country,” OSHA National News Release, December 19, 2024.

35. Teamsters Local 804, “Organizing at Amazon Grows as New York Teamsters Demand Hearing on Delivery Protection Act,” January 2025; Teamsters Local 804, “Local 804 Renews Demand to Pass the Delivery Protection Act,” February 2026. Similar to other platform companies like Uber and Lyft, Amazon classifies drivers as independent contractors despite exercising substantial control over their work processes.

36. Office of the New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, “Fast Shipping, Slow Justice: Traffic, Worker, and Climate Hazards in Last Mile Delivery,” Bureau of Policy and Research, November 2025.

37. Luc Rene, “New Yorkers Need the Delivery Protection Act—Now,” Streetsblog NYC, February 24, 2026.

38. John Morawetz, Tom Frezee, and Ruth Ruttenberg, “Worker Trainers as Workplace Experts: How Worker Trainers Enhance Safety and Health at Department of Energy Facilities,” Labor Studies Journal 46, no. 1 (2021): 33-42; Barbara Hilyer, Laura Leviton, Lynn Overman, and Snigdha Mukherjee, “A Union-Initiated Safety Training Program Leads to Improved Workplace Safety,” Labor Studies Journal 24, no. 4 (2000): 53-66; Clayton Sinyai, Pete Stafford, and Chris Trahan, “Doing it Old-School: Peer-Led Occupational Safety Training in the U.S. Construction Industry,” McGill Journal of Education 48, no. 3 (2013): 605-12.

39. The 2016 Property Service Workers Protection Act mandated anti-sexual harassment training by peer educators for all janitorial workers in the state, and the 2019 Janitor Survivor Empowerment Act created provisions for this training by peer educators known as promotoras.

40. Sanjay Pinto, Zoë West and KC Wagner, “Healing into Power: An Approach for Confronting Workplace Sexual Violence,” New Labor Forum 30, no. 2 (2021).

41. Prior to recent legislative initiatives, the movement alignment targeting Amazon’s abuses gathered strength through the successful 2019 campaign against the company’s proposed HQ2 and union drives following the Covid-19 safety strikes of 2020.

42. This includes the indirect source rule bills proposed by City Council Member Alexa Avilés and State Assembly Member Marcela Mitaynes, which would regulate air pollution from last-mile operations in New York City and across New York State.

43. Paul Sandle, “More than 400 Lawmakers from 34 Countries Back ‘Make Amazon Pay’ Campaign,” Reuters, December 4, 2020; Bernard Sanders, “The Big Tech Oligarchs’ War against Workers: AI and Automation Could Destroy Nearly 100 Million U.S Jobs in a Decade,” U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, Minority Staff Report, October 6, 2025.

44. Bolstered by a strong co-enforcement strategy between DCWP and labor, community, and educational partners, a peer education center could train workers from across the state; program evaluation at the state level could support efforts at increasing NYS resources for such a center.

45. For example, under a work-sharing agreement between the U.S. Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the NYC Commission on Human Rights (NYCCHR), NYCCHR can enforce both municipal and federal anti-discrimination laws.

46. Workplace safety committees provided for under the NY HERO Act offer a template through which compliance procedures could be co-developed.

47. Alí R. Bustamante, “Balancing Power Between Workers and Employers Requires Sectoral Bargaining,” Roosevelt Institute, July 2023; Sharon Block and Benjamin Sachs, “Clean Slate for Worker Power: Building a Just Economy and Democracy,” Harvard Law School Labor and Worklife Program, 2020.

48. “NY Farm Laborer Wage Board Refuses to Set 40-Hour Overtime,” Worker Justice Center, 2021; Veena Dubal, “Sectoral Bargaining Reforms: Proceed with Caution,” New Labor Forum 31, no. 1 (2021): 11-40.

Author Biographies

Nantina Vgontzas is an assistant professor of labor studies at the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies. Their research focuses on the politics of labor, technology, and climate. Currently, they are writing a book about AI impacts and responses across Amazon’s global supply chain.

Sanjay Pinto is a fellow at the University of Illinois Chicago Center for Urban Economic Development and the Worker Institute at Cornell ILR, and an affiliate at the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies and Data & Society Research Institute. His research focuses on the intersection of democratic governance, labor organizing, and movements for racial and gender justice.

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