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This story was originally published by The City Reporter. Sign up here to get the latest stories from The City Reporter delivered to you each morning.

For more than a year, Esly Paredes shared regular dispatches of her life as a delivery driver for Amazon to her small following on TikTok — dishing on her preferred lunch spots and fashion scores among hundreds of videos of herself hauling packages and killing time between shifts.

In one April 30 post — filmed, like many of her videos, in full uniform inside a parked Amazon truck — a man she describes as her boss smiles and waves at the camera.

Paredes said her bosses never raised any issues about her fledgling social media presence. That is, until she posted a series of videos supporting a City Council bill fiercely opposed by Amazon and a consortium of groups representing the company’s subcontractors.

Paredes was fired on May 27 for violating her employer’s solicitation and social media policies, according to a copy of her termination letter obtained by The City Reporter, a charge she says violates her free speech rights. She filed a formal complaint to the National Labor Relations Board with the help of the Teamsters, which has been organizing Amazon delivery drivers in New York and California for the last several years.

“They thought I would stay quiet, and they thought that by firing me, they would silence me,” Paredes, a 31-year-old single mother from Jamaica, Queens, said in Spanish. “But I’m raising my voice, speaking out in my videos even more to explain to fellow drivers why these protections are necessary.”

Amazon Is Using AI to Disempower Workers. The US Labor Movement Must Fight Back.

Amazon spokesperson Leigh Anne Gullett said in a statement that the company had no involvement “in any personnel decision involving Ms. Paredes.”

“Delivery Service Partners are independent businesses that hire and manage their own employees,” said Gullett.

Vincent Satriano, owner of Paredes’ former employer Satriano Logistics/STAA, said in an email: “This decision followed repeated violations of my company’s policies. No other factors were involved.”

The bill Paredes backed would directly impact workers........

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