Amazon is quitting Quebec to ‘shock and awe’ workers worldwide

The corporate giant feared a ‘breakthrough’ after Quebec workers unionized and were set to secure the first collective agreement in the world

by Mostafa Henaway

Analysis

Jan 23 2025

Amazon has a message for its army of precarious workers worldwide: dare to unionize and you will be punished.

After failing to thwart a historic unionization drive in Quebec, Amazon is now shuttering all its operations in the province, laying off nearly 2,000 workers.

The move is a brazen attempt to punish workers in the province who achieved what many thought impossible. In May 2024, about 300 workers at the Laval warehouse successfully unionized—a historic first in Canada—despite facing two years of anti-union tactics, intimidation, and surveillance. What’s more, they were set to become the first Amazon workers anywhere in the world to secure a collective agreement.

For Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, this move isn’t just about crushing the Laval workers and their union; it’s a direct assault on the entire global working class. It marks a growing offensive by corporations and the capitalist class who are trying to put workers in their place with austerity measures and attacks on labour organizing.

Here in Quebec, Amazon’s move leaves 1,700 workers—many of them immigrants, international students, and people with families—jobless in the midst of rising unemployment and a worsening cost-of-living crisis.

Meanwhile, the tech oligarch Bezos continues to amass unimaginable wealth, with his fortune now exceeding $200 billion.

Amazon feared a ‘breakthrough’ for workers in Quebec

Amazon’s time in Quebec has been brief—but marked by worker resistance throughout.

The company opened its first fulfillment centre in Lachine in 2020 and quickly expanded to seven facilities across the province. In the winter of 2022, workers at the Lachine warehouse launched the first sustained campaign to improve working conditions. In response, Amazon resorted to union-busting tactics, including pressuring workers not to sign union cards. These actions were later deemed unlawful in a Quebec labour ruling.

While that campaign didn’t end in union certification, the breakthrough came in May 2024 at the Laval facility—the first Amazon warehouse in Quebec and Canada to successfully unionize.

The victory didn’t come easy. As a labour organizer who for a time worked undercover at that warehouse, I saw Amazon’s exploitation, surveillance, and relentless anti-union intimidation firsthand.

What sets the Laval case apart from unionization drives in other parts of the world is a unique provision in Quebec’s labour code: employers are legally required to reach a first collective agreement with a union, once it exists. If negotiations then stall, the dispute goes to arbitration.

This has given Laval workers a powerful tool not available in other other jurisdictions.

In the United States, for example, Amazon workers in Staten Island—whose historic union victory inspired workers globally—have been left without a contract for more than two years now. Amazon has refused to even come to the negotiating table.

A first collective agreement in Laval would have represented a major breakthrough for Amazon workers worldwide, potentially inspiring more than 1.5 million employees, and set a precedent the company was desperate to avoid.

Amazon has claimed that its decision to leave Quebec is driven by costs and profitability, not union activity. But the company has long valued its market dominance over profits. And it has always been willing to wield that monopolistic power to crush workers’ rights, even at the cost of short-term financial gains.

The real motives behind the corporate giant’s recent announcement are clear: this is an aggressive “shock and awe” campaign designed not only to discipline workers here but to send a message of intimidation across its global operations.

Amazon’s actions in Quebec, announced just two days after Jeff Bezos and other tech oligarchs stood alongside Donald Trump during his inauguration, are emblematic of a dangerous trend.

As more and more of our economy is controlled by wealthy corporations and oligarchs that run them, the fight for workers’ rights is about the future of our democracy.

Our solidarity and fightback are even more profound in this period. This is not just their fight—it’s a fight for all of us.