The union alleged the warehouse closures contradict Amazon's recently stated business plans
Confédération des syndicats nationaux, the labour organization behind the only certified Amazon worker union in Canada, filed a legal complaint against Amazon, alleging the e-commerce giant’s decision to close its Quebec warehouses contradicts its business plan and is aimed at unlawfully eliminating union activity.
The complaint, filed Thursday afternoon with Quebec’s Administrative Labour Tribunal, asks the tribunal to restore operations at each of Amazon’s seven warehouses in Quebec and pay each employee more than a year’s wages as well as moral and punitive damages.
CSN president Caroline Senneville said in a statement, “The closure of Amazon's warehouses serves only one purpose: to avoid signing a collective agreement and eradicate any union presence in North America. There is no other explanation for this decision.
“It is a blatant violation of our laws and the fundamental rights enshrined in our Charters,” Senneville said. “The tribunal must overturn this decision and order the reinstatement of the 1,900 illegally dismissed Amazon employees.”
Amazon spokesperson Barbara Agrait told Canadian Lawyer, “The CSN continues to mislead people about the nature of this decision. Our return to a third-party delivery model in Quebec, supported by local small businesses and similar to our pre-2020 model, will allow us to provide the same great service with even more savings to our customers over the long run.
“Throughout this transition, we've complied and will continue to comply with all applicable federal and provincial laws,” Agrait added.
According to a copy of the complaint obtained by Canadian Lawyer, Amazon opened four of its Quebec facilities three years ago as part of an investment to speed up deliveries. The complaint cited Amazon chief executive officer Andy Jassy's statement during an October 2024 conference call on the company’s third-quarter financial results.
Referencing the company’s strategy of shifting to a regional network model, Jassy said that “rearchitecture” had “already improved our ability to spread inventory across our fulfillment centers by 25% year over year, allowing us to have more of the requisite items in fulfillment centers closest to the customer so we can compile shipments and ship to customers even more quickly.”
CSN said there was no reason why Amazon would decide to return to a third-party delivery model only three months later. On Jan. 22, six months after the company was set to begin negotiating a collective agreement with CSN, Amazon announced it would close its Quebec warehouses and outsource its operations. Quebec’s labour tribunal certified CSN as the union for workers at Amazon's DXT4 warehouse in Laval, Quebec, last April.
CSN alleged in its complaint that Amazon engaged in union-busting tactics when the union campaign began in the spring of 2022. The union also noted that the labour tribunal condemned Amazon in July for refusing to bargain.
CSN noted that workers at JFK8, the Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, New York, that became the first Amazon facility to successfully unionize in 2022, have yet to reach a collective agreement with the company.
Sylvain Beauchamp, a partner at labour firm Melançon Marceau Grenier Cohen who is not affiliated with either party, calls CSN’s filing an “ambitious complaint.”
The lawyer points to a 2009 Supreme Court of Canada decision called Plourde v. Wal-Mart Canada Corp., which found that a Wal-Mart in Jonquière, Quebec, had the right to permanently shut down regardless of the reason. A worker had filed a lawsuit against Wal-Mart to challenge the store’s closure, which occurred less than a year after it became the first unionized Wal-Mart location in North America.
While the SCC dismissed the worker’s claim that Wal-Mart had violated specific sections of the Quebec Labour Code, the high court also clarified that he had the right, under ss. 12 to 14 of the law, to seek damages arising from the store’s closure and alleged anti-union motivation.
“The court said, listen, it’s not impossible for a tribunal seized of a s. 12 complaint to have the… judicial courage or ambition to grant the complaint and order an employer to annul the decision that was made in the context of an act of interference with union activities,” Beauchamp says. CSN’s complaint alleged that Amazon violated ss. 12-14 of the Quebec Labour Code.
Beauchamp, who has practised law for more than 25 years, says he is unaware of any cases where Quebec’s labour tribunal has ordered a facility to reopen after being accused of shutting down to quell union activity.
“The crux of the matter, in my view, is whether the tribunal will have the judicial ambition to order the remedies that are sought,” he adds.
Quebec’s labour tribunal certified CSN as the union for workers at Amazon's DXT4 warehouse in Laval, Quebec, in April.
