Unionized: Amazon.com closes all warehouses in Québec

The retail group Amazon.com is closing all seven of its warehouses in the Canadian province of Quebec and switching to small, private service providers. According to media reports, this will cost 1,700 to 1,800 jobs directly at Amazon as well as thousands more at delivery service providers who brought the goods from the warehouses to the customers.

One of the seven warehouses became the first Canadian Amazon warehouse to be unionized last year. It has around 300 employees. The union recently demanded that Amazon increase the minimum hourly wage from 20 to 26 Canadian dollars, which is currently equivalent to 17.38 euros. Due to little progress in the negotiations, the union has just prepared a request for arbitration, which is provided for in Quebec labor law as a precautionary measure against strikes.

According to Amazon, however, the closures have nothing at all to do with the fact that the workers in Quebec have decided to organize themselves in the face of Amazon's resistance. External service providers are simply cheaper and nothing will change for customers. In the summer, the provincial labor court sentenced Amazon to 10,000 dollars in damages plus 20,000 dollars in punitive damages for unlawfully obstructing the union in a warehouse. Proceedings are pending regarding similar allegations at a second location.

Amazon has maintained its warehouses in Quebec since 2020. Until then, the online retailer relied on external service providers in the French-speaking province. This is said to have turned out to be the more cost-effective approach, which is why Amazon will close its facilities within two months. The announcement was made by email on Wednesday. Québec is around 4.7 times the size of Germany and has a good 9.1 million inhabitants.

Reactions

The Canadian trade union umbrella organization reacted with incomprehension. “This decision makes no sense whatsoever,” says indignant Chairwoman Caroline Senneville, “Not from an economic standpoint, not from an operational perspective. Amazon, one of the best-integrated companies, from mouse click to delivery, entrusting warehousing and distribution to third parties? There's only so much we can be taken for fools. This is completely against the business model that Amazon has developed.”

Québec's Employment Minister Kateri Champagne Jourdain from the nationalist-conservative CAQ party (Coalition Avenir Québec) reacted with concern to La Presse. The provincial minister promises support for retraining as soon as Amazon has filed the legally required notice of mass layoffs. She does not see any connection to the collective organization of employees: “It is a reorganization”. The return to the previous sales structure allows the company to save money.

Québec's Minister of Labor, Jean Boulet, did not want to comment on the background. The leading opposition Liberal party was different: “It is clear that (the union) was probably a motive,” said the party's acting leader Marc Tanguay. The public sector must now stop ordering from Amazon.

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