Amazon is notorious for its hostility to unions and any type of organizing from its employees. But on January 22 it escalated its anti-worker conduct to a new level when it announced it would be shutting down its Quebec operations over the next few weeks, closing seven facilities and laying off around 2,000 workers.
Workers at Amazon’s DXT4 warehouse in Laval, a suburb of Montreal, won union certification last spring, despite facing two years of illegal anti-union intimidation and surveillance. Amazon first challenged this victory legally in October on the (ridiculous) basis that Quebec’s card-check certification system violates the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Quebec Administrative Labour Tribunal swiftly dismissed this claim.
Unlike in the United States, Quebec law mandates first contract arbitration for new unions who have won a certification election, but cannot negotiate a contract at the bargaining table. This mandate is meant to prevent employers from dragging out contract negotiations, sometimes for years, as has been the case at JFK8 in New York, where Amazon has refused to negotiate a contract for the last three years, despite the historic certification victory won there in 2022.
Union busting tactics
Facing the threat of a contract imposed by binding arbitration, and organizing progress at other Quebec worksites, Amazon chose to shut down its entire operation in the province, rather than allow its workers there to have a voice. Amazon claims that this decision was motivated by the sudden realization that returning to a third-party business model in Quebec would be more cost-effective, but this claim is absurd. Contracting out the work to smaller businesses will be more costly and less efficient for Amazon, which has risen to prominence precisely because of its ability to cut costs and speed deliveries through scale and centralized systems of control.
In fact, it is precisely this mania for centralized control which lies behind the company’s decision to shut down Quebec operations, and also serves to explain its other union-busting activities. Amazon’s management wants to retain sole control over all decisions, unhindered by the legal obligations to its employees that a collective agreement would entail. Amazon values flexibility and complete control over its labour processes, both of which it sees as critical to reacting nimbly to changing market conditions and quickly and seamlessly moving deliveries through the different nodes of its network. The things workers are organizing for – job security, safer working conditions, a reasonable pace of work, and adequate breaks – threaten the control Amazon needs to exercise over its workforce in order to make its delivery model work. For Amazon, unions represent more than just increased costs on a balance sheet; they pose a threat to the unchecked managerial authority at the heart of its business model.
The shuttering of warehouses in Quebec is only the latest in Amazon’s long line of anti-union actions. The company severed the contracts of unionized groups of delivery drivers (effectively firing them en masse), refuses to negotiate a contract with JFK8 workers, fires union activists in the workplace, and carries out daily harassment and intimidation of workers trying to win more respect on the job. But the Quebec shutdown represents a new escalation and puts on full display just how far Amazon will go to maintain management’s dictatorial power.
Mass organizing
Amazon’s actions in Quebec illustrate that organizers will need to rethink outdated practices that may have worked in other industries at other times. Site-by-site organizing, standard practice for most US and Canadian unions, will fail at a company willing to shutter any part of its network which could be an entry point for unionism. Amazon workers need to be organized across the entire North American network, something beyond the capacity of any single union. Such mass organization is only possible if the effort is taken up as a class crusade involving different unions, worker centers, and socialist and community organizations. For this movement to bring Amazon to the bargaining table, it must build the capacity to strategically disrupt the flow of packages between the different nodes of its network through slowdowns, wildcat strikes, walkouts and other unpredictable disruptions of production.
For this reason, the type of unionism required to win against Amazon requires a broader class perspective and a focus on building strong, worker-led, shopfloor organizations. Organizing Amazon represents a unique opportunity to demonstrate that class unionism is not just an attractive idea, but the only practical way to effectively combat the massive multinational corporations which dominate our society.
In shutting down its Quebec operations, Amazon has thrown down the gauntlet to the labour movement. Whether we can rise to its challenge will be a defining question for labour activists and organizers in the 21st century.
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