Lessons from the Quebec Amazon union campaign

On January 22, local Amazon workers woke up to a shocking announcement by the company  that it would shut down all seven of its warehouses in Quebec, leaving over 4,500 workers unemployed overnight.  Initially, the number of workers laid off was estimated to be 1,700. Those numbers masked the severity of the impact due to Amazon’s misclassification of its delivery drivers as working for subcontractors, which represented the majority of workers inside Amazon’s operations.

This move by Amazon to shut down its entire operation was an historic assault on workers and their ability to organize for dignity within one of the world’s largest corporations. The shocking and abrupt move needs to be seen within its broader political context. Amazon’s brazen closure came just two days after Jeff Bezos stood alongside Mark Zuckerberg directly behind Donald Trump at the U.S. President’s inauguration. This picture could not make the moment any clearer: a promise that we will witness a renewed offensive by corporations and the capitalist class to ensure their profits at the expense of workers everywhere.

Amazon claimed the mass closings were due to cost concerns, but the timing is suspicious. Amazon’s decision comes on the heels of the historic and successful union drive at an Amazon delivery station in Laval, on the outskirts of Montreal, where in May 2024, three hundred workers were certified as the first union in a Canadian Amazon facility, becoming members of the Confederation Syndicats Nationaux (CSN).

In fact, the CSN was in negotiations for the first collective bargaining agreement for Amazon workers in North America when the plant was shuttered. While Amazon workers in Italy have won partial collective agreements at the local level, offering some control over shifts, pay, and scheduling, the Laval station would have been the first comprehensive collective agreement for Amazon workers globally.  If Amazon had failed to reach an agreement with the CSN, negotiations would be legally bound to continue in arbitration under Quebec’s Labour Code. Unlike the workers in JFK8 in Staten Island who have been the victims of Amazon’s ability to delay negotiations for their collective agreement, Amazon is unable to utilize the same strategy in Quebec. This would have been a major blow to Amazon’s ability to fend off unionization. Thus, the announcement to workers at Laval station and, more broadly, to workers across Quebec, reeked of retaliation.

As Amazon remains the world’s second largest private employer, behind only Walmart, its use of such a brazen tactic sends a clear message to all those workers and unions who have been organizing in Canada, the U.S., and across Europe: no organizing will be tolerated. This signal is particularly notable as Amazon workers in New York and Los Angeles had struck on December 19, 2024 even if the impact of these strikes on the company remains unclear.

The ripple effects of the Quebec closures could be felt thousands of miles away, in North Carolina, where three-quarters of employees at an Amazon fulfillment center in Garner voted against unionizing with the grassroots labor organization Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity and Empowerment (CAUSE). According to the National Labor Relations Board, 2,447 workers cast ballots against union representation, while only 829 voted in favor. The closures in Quebec demonstrate that Amazon is willing to sacrifice its investments and infrastructure to stave off any attempt at unionization, which could hinder its total control over workers and fundamentally disrupt its model of “fast and free” shipping.

Amazon’s short-lived presence in Quebec—it only opened its first warehouse there in 2020— will remain a historic moment for the labor movement, reshaping how we conceive of class struggle and worker organizing. The move demonstrates both the extent to which workers are willing to fight and the lengths Amazon will go to suppress that fight. While the Laval warehouse was the first to be unionized and had a collective bargaining agreement on the horizon, it also became the first Amazon facility to be shuttered en masse to stifle worker organizing.

Waves of struggles

The historic organizing victory of the Quebec Amazon workers in DXT4, who formed the Syndicat des travailleuses et travailleurs d’Amazon Laval–CSN (STTAL–CSN)/ Laval Amazon Workers Union (CSN), must be understood within the broader wave of labor organizing within Amazon’s warehouses in Quebec.

The first attempt to unionize Amazon in Quebec occurred in February 2022, when workers at YUL2, an Amazon fulfillment center, launched a campaign with the Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN). CSN is the second largest trade union federation in the province, representing over 330,000 workers. Trade union plurality remains a pillar within the labor movement in Quebec, as there are four major trade union federations. The organizing campaign, which went public in March 2022, faced significant resistance, including an aggressive anti-union campaign that forced key organizers to quit under duress. The unionization drive was led by worker activists, with a history of organizing in both immigrant communities and in their home countries. These leaders were not employed by the union as salts but were organically embedded in the Amazon warehouse, organizing for fair treatment and against arbitrary decisions made by managers, against low wages, and against labor speed-ups. The union also partnered with the Immigrant Workers Centre (IWC) to support employees facing workplace injuries and labor rights violations.

Despite gaining traction, the YUL2 campaign faced structural challenges, including high turnover and an inability to connect with particular sections of the workforce. A challenge inside Amazon is the level of compartmentalization, as there are several shifts and different work areas for inbound and outbound workers. Amazon, particularly in Quebec, often employs new immigrants, which became both an opportunity and a challenge to the Laval organizers. For many workers, Amazon provided their first job in Quebec, which created barriers to organizing, including language barriers and fears around immigration status. Ultimately, however,  organic leadership created bridges across layers of workers. In support of the union drive, the  IWC  provided a space for workers to collectively address their current grievances and simultaneously build a political response to Amazon’s exploitation and difficult work conditions. Even as the initial unionization effort stalled, the IWC organizing space nurtured a new layer of worker activists to pressure the Quebec Minister of Labor, and to lay the groundwork for subsequent organizing efforts including DXT4.

During this period, a more concentrated campaign to organize Amazon facilities emerged, driven by younger radicals and organizers within a new formation called Workers’ Alliance. This new formation pursued a class-struggle unionism strategy, promoting salting as a means to build militant unions. Unlike other initiatives, their goal was not merely to create independent worker organizations but to radicalize the labor movement by establishing strong unions. The  DXT4 (Laval station) workers had approached CSN at the same time as workers inside YUL2 (Montreal station). The campaign, driven by committed organizers inside with the support of CSN took on the organizing at DXT4. This strategy proved crucial in the successful unionization drive at DXT4. Organizers placed committed activists inside the delivery station, where they built trust with a community of recent refugee workers from Chad. These workers, already politicized and who were active in politics back home, recognized the need for unionization, especially given Amazon’s high injury rates. (In the case of DXT4, in the first six months of 2024, 50 out of 250 workers at the facility were on leave due to workplace injuries.) Another crucial factor was that Amazon’s wages haven’t kept up with inflation. Wages remained $20 an hour, while at unionized warehouses, wages average $28 an hour for workers on the floor. Thus, like in the case at JFK8, while salts played a critical role in organizing efforts, the success of the unionization drive was primarily a result of genuine-organic organizing by workers as well.

A key factor in why Quebec was the first recognized union in Canada is due to the industrial relations framework in the region. Unlike in the U.S. and the rest of Canada, where unionization efforts require elections, Quebec’s card-check system allows a union to be certified once 50% plus one workers sign union cards. This system enabled Amazon workers to secure union recognition in May of 2024.

Amazon, the world’s most aggressively anti-union corporation, immediately retaliated. The company granted raises to workers at all non-unionized warehouses in Montreal. In response, workers organized a rally outside the unionized delivery station. Amazon continued this divide-and-conquer strategy in the fall, offering a $1.50 wage increase to non-unionized sites while excluding the unionized warehouse. The union swiftly organized a demonstration with over 50 workers to push back. In early January 2025, additional retaliation by Amazon laid off a group of 30 workers who were ‘seasonal’ workers or what Amazon calls white badge workers.

These temporary contracted workers are regularly renewed and are pivotal to Amazon’s labor model. Only permanent or blue badge workers receive benefits and job security, and many white badge workers remain hyper-exploited,  succumbing to pressure to meet quotas so they can become blue badge workers after a year. The layoffs affected white badge workers who had been present during the unionization campaign. Importantly, these workers were laid off before other white badge workers who had been hired during the Christmas peak season. This development angered workers and showed that Amazon had no intention of bargaining in good faith. In addition, these retaliation measures also saw the deployment of employee relations staff from the U.S. at all the warehouses in Montreal to quell the other union campaigns where workers had begun to organize  (such as YUL2 and YUL5).

Then came the ultimate blow. As negotiations progressed, Amazon abruptly announced the closure of all Quebec warehouses. By shutting down all sites, rather than just the unionized one, Amazon circumvented Quebec labor laws, which prohibit retaliatory closures targeting unionized facilities. Further, the looming threat of tariffs created a brief surge of Quebec nationalism leading some to miss the significance of the events. When asked about Amazon’s closures, Quebec’s Premier François Legault dismissed concerns with a flippant remark: “First, the Canadiens won yesterday. Second, I haven’t had my orange juice this morning.” His words did little to comfort the thousands of workers left without severance pay or job security in an economically unstable climate.

On the day of the announcement, workers came together from both the DXT4 unionized warehouse and from the other non-unionized facilities. The workers organized an emergency assembly open to all Amazon workers. In the assembly, around 50 workers gathered to express both their sense of anger and resolve. Amazon workers understood there would be immense challenges concerning where to place pressure to target both the government and Amazon. Workers demanded first that their jobs remain, and in a tacit acknowledgment  that this may not be possible, they also demanded a one-year severance compensation for all workers, including delivery service partner drivers.

Workers also discussed how Amazon was essentially reliant upon the government for the bulk of their contracts for Amazon Web Services in Quebec. Quebec has a number of contracts with Amazon Web Services for provincial agencies, valuing over $170 million. Amazon was also given a 15-year tax holiday in Quebec related to the amount of investments made in Quebec. Workers had demanded that the government end its contracts with Amazon, but also that it cut its ties with the company. During the days after the announcement, activists launched a grassroots boycott campaign of Amazon. Workers at the assembly voted to support the boycott Amazon campaign.

The assembly also sought the assistance of both the IWC, and Mouvement Action Chommage, another worker organization that supports unemployed workers to help provide vital services to workers who were not unionized. Beyond the assembly, the union had voted to hold a daily picket, and a major demonstration was called for by the CSN, which mobilized over 2,000 people.

While the demand for one year severance and benefits remains a vital issue, another issue that has mobilized the drivers is the way in which Amazon has skirted the labor laws beyond the warehouse closures, which are now being challenged in the courts. Under Quebec labor law, whenever mass layoffs occur, workers are entitled to several weeks of pay or notice of termination, depending on the size of the layoff. However, in the delivery stations, because the drivers are not counted as Amazon workers but contractors, they were not covered by this legal protection. The fact that the smaller delivery companies are controlled by Amazon, and that these drivers are given little pay, added to the frustrations many drivers felt. If all the workers were counted as Amazon employees, they would have the legal right to the maximum number of weeks, a reality that impacts both the drivers and the warehouse employees.

In response, organizers have sought to mobilize drivers through workshops, legal clinics, and organizing a demonstration and press conference to pressure the labor ministry to recognize all workers as Amazon workers. Yet there is no guarantee that this tactic will help organizers to engage the drivers who, in fact, represent the overwhelming majority of Amazon workers.

The challenges

There are crucial lessons to be drawn from the Amazon organizing experience, which require serious reflection of both structural obstacles and the strategic orientation of labor organizing. In this moment of belligerent class warfare, these lessons should inform organizing projects at Amazon and beyond.

The first major challenge was the expectation that Amazon would operate within the law and act like another employer. Many believed that there was nothing unique to Amazon, and while it was understood that Amazon was vehemently anti-union the reasons for its anti-worker orientation would be similar to those of Walmart and tied exclusively to profitability. However, Amazon’s stubborn anti-union stance is not about quarterly profitability alone. This becomes clear when one considers that most of the company’s profits stem from Amazon Web Services, even though a significant portion of its revenues are still facilitated through e-commerce, which provides free cash flows for easy reinvestment.

Amazon understands very well that the faster the circulation of goods, the more cash on hand it has for reinvestment as payments are received with greater speed and regularity. Thus, it is the prompt turnover of goods that concerns Amazon, not just the rate of profit on them. Kim Moody describes this practice that capitalist firms are engaged in as  time-based competition. For some firms what is paramount is the ability to reduce the time from production to consumption, which gives them dominance in the market. Within advanced capitalist states, it is no longer just production but the rapid distribution of goods that ensures profitability. That fundamentally means that it is control over the labor process, the intensification of work, that remains at the heart of Amazon’s need to fend off any form of worker organization. Amazon’s model cannot allow workers to have control over the pace of work, over health and safety, over quotas, schedules, or even seniority. The company has even made clear that they desire a rate of attrition. It does not want to hold on to  workers who are injured or workers who are on the job more than two years.

Another key lesson from this struggle is the necessity of both a rank-and-file strategy and a broad coalition of unions. Workers inside Amazon facilities hold real power at strategic choke points within its logistics network. However, Amazon’s ability to reroute shipments through subcontractors (like in the case of Quebec a firm called Intelcom, which really is just a dependent subcontractor of Amazon), or larger firms like FedEx, and even Canada Post, reveals the need for solidarity across unions within the logistics sector and beyond. Unions representing postal workers, port employees, and logistics workers must recognize that even if they are not directly organizing Amazon employees, their actions can pressure Amazon’s supply chain. Also as other labor organizers have pointed out, Amazon’s endless resources can easily exploit weak labor laws. This reality requires a major union coalition which can deploy organizers, resources across Amazon’s vast logistics network, leaving no room for Amazon to go around the choke points and upend workers power at any given site.

The lessons of going beyond the union

In such an anti-union environment, the need for unions today is ever clearer to workers. However, we cannot discount the role of rank and file organizations and networks, which can stand the test of time. The experience of the Amazon campaign, through its successes and its defeats, was that workers did organize, and there was the ability to develop real leaders, and worker activists. This was true on the shop floor and outside the warehouse through the Montreal Amazon Workers’ Committee. These workers built mutual aid, supported their co-workers in defending their rights, challenging their managers, and speaking out publicly and in their workplace to denounce the conditions workers faced.

As these workers became radicalized and were willing to take action to participate in union activity or the fight against Amazon, a key question remains: why did we engage in this organizing project if the possibility of having a union is no longer a reality?

Building the union also affords the opportunity to build rank and file worker committees, and outside committees that support union drives, and these elements must be an integral part of our strategy. These workers can remain a base for our movements inside and outside of the workplace, becoming a new layer of militants if we continue to support their organizing and leadership development and do not abandon them simply because it is impossible to form a union. By winning workers over to the movement and helping build their self-organization, particularly among  migrants, refugees, and those in precarious jobs, we achieved another victory. Workers are willing to be part of the struggle if we are willing to join them. These campaigns proved that immigrant workers could be a threat to employers.  This lesson is fundamental beyond Amazon, and what is at stake could not be clearer.

The far right, cloaked in their veil of championing the working class while directly attacking us, and our base of workers, especially those most marginalized, has not come to the fore. However, the experience of Amazon shows that mobilization of these groups of workers is not only possible,  but also central to any political struggle in our current moment. While the shock and awe of Amazon’s attempt to smother out worker dissent and organizing will only fuel further organizing among workers, where that dissent goes depends on us.

For organizers, this is a critical moment in the campaign, as workers become demoralized or move on a search for other work after the shuttering of the warehouse, and yet this is when workers need to be the most active. The Amazon campaign has a broad element of activists and public mobilization, but without workers en masse engaged in the campaign, it will be doomed to failure.

Quebec’s experience shows that organizing Amazon requires a coordinated, coast-to-coast campaign. Beyond union efforts, it demands a rank-and-file strategy that fosters worker-led activism. Many Amazon workers, particularly migrants and refugees, have never participated in union activism before, and this struggle has radicalized a new layer of militants who can continue organizing within and beyond Amazon.

This is a historic opportunity for the Left and a wake-up call to the unions that we need to seek a new strategy to organize these workers. The fight against Amazon is not just about securing a contract—it is about rebuilding a multi-racial working-class movement that is able to challenge those who wield power in our societies; able to challenge those who are at the heart of creating the economic insecurity and growing inequality driven by profit at all costs. Amazon’s mass layoffs, meant to crush workers, can instead fuel further organizing. Whether this moment leads to a broader movement or dissipates depends on how the Left and the labor movement respond.

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Featured Image credit: Sarah Tew/CNET; modified by Tempest.