Last May, about 230 workers at an Amazon warehouse in Laval, Que., successfully unionized — a historic first in Canada at the retail giant.
The CSN, the union that represents the workers in Laval, said workers were dissatisfied with what they described as a hectic work pace, low wages and inadequate health and safety measures.
Amazon has only one other unionized workforce in North America, in Staten Island, N.Y. It was certified in 2022 but still doesn’t have a contract.
In Quebec, the province’s stronger labour laws would have soon forced the two parties to negotiate a collective agreement or could have imposed arbitration on them if they didn’t reach a deal, experts said.
“I think essentially what’s happening here is that the clock was ticking down on a first collective agreement,” said Adam King, an assistant professor in the labour studies program at the University of Manitoba.
“Amazon had tried to contest the certification of this bargaining unit in Quebec and lost.”
A collective bargaining agreement could have led to the union expanding to other facilities in the province, King suggested.
That won’t happen anymore, now that Amazon has announced it will shut all seven of its facilities in Quebec, lay off 1,700 permanent employees and outsource its work to third-party companies. The decision comes after a period of rapid expansion; the first facility in the province opened in July 2020.
Amazon declined an interview for this story.
In a statement, a spokesperson maintained the decision was about reducing costs.
“This decision is about offering the best service we can to customers in a way that’s efficient and cost effective,” spokesperson Steve Kelly said in an email.
“We’ve been using third-party carriers in Quebec for many years. Returning to a well-tested third-party only model will allow us to provide the same great service and even more savings to our customers over the long run.”
The Walmart case
The Amazon case recalls another dispute 20 years ago in Quebec involving Walmart Canada. In 2004, that company closed a store in Jonquière, Que., citing profitability troubles just months after workers achieved union certification. Unifor, the union representing the workers, challenged the move.
In 2014, the Supreme Court of Canada found the company defied Quebec labour law when it shut down after unionization.
Amazon announced Wednesday that it will shut down all seven of its facilities in the province in the coming weeks, insisting the decision was tied to cost savings and not a new union at its Laval warehouse.
Barry Eidlin, an associate professor of sociology at McGill University, said Amazon shutting down solely its Laval warehouse would have been a clear violation of Quebec labour law, following the 2014 decision.
It would have been “a unilateral change in working conditions in the period where they’re supposed to be collective bargaining,” said Eidlin.
Still, experts said the CSN is likely to challenge Amazon in court. “It’s their best option at this point to file an unfair labour practice and see where it goes,” said King.
A ‘nightmare’ and ‘devastating’
The CSN said the move was “contrary to the provisions of the Labour Code, and one that we will firmly oppose.”
The Amazon facilities are to be closed over the next two months. Alexandre Campeau, an Amazon delivery driver based in Lachine, said losing his job is “a nightmare” and “devastating.”
“I will probably be able to get another job but I won’t be at the same salary that I was right now,” he said. “In the meantime, I have car payments, everybody has families and people to take care of.”
Amazon became a $2 trillion company last year, with facilities and thousands of employees across Canada. It has long been a target for unions that say the company’s emphasis on ever-faster speed and efficiency can lead to injuries.
Late last year, workers at seven locations in the U.S. went on strike, complaining of poor working conditions.
“There’s these upticks in labour militancy that haven’t been seen in decades, but they’re running up against these corporate behemoths like Amazon …. and they’re really digging in their heels,” Eidlin said.
Following Amazon’s decision to close its Quebec facilities, some have vowed to stop shopping with the company in protest, return recent purchases and cancel their accounts.
Unifor applied for union certification at a warehouse in Delta, B.C. last year. The results of that vote are sealed due to an unfair labour practices complaint the union filed, which alleges Amazon ramped up hiring to try to dilute union support.
In Quebec, an Administrative Labour Tribunal judge also ordered Amazon last year to stop interfering with union affairs at another Quebec facility in Lachine.
Amazon was ordered to pay a total of $30,000 in moral and punitive damages. In King’s view, the rise of private companies such as Amazon represents an existential question for the labour movement.
“It plays a central role in e-commerce and it’s really transformed the warehousing and logistics sector by pulling the standards down, pulling the wage rates down,” he said.
“I think unions are really treating this as a serious issue and trying to figure out how they can make inroads with this company, and there are questions here too about how governments will ultimately respond to this.”
