In February 2025, demonstrations were seen all over Montreal in response to the closing of all Amazon facilities in Quebec, which entailed the laying off of 2,000 permanent workers and 2,500 subcontractors. Amazon insists its reason for closing these warehouses was to deliver more efficient and cost-effective services to customers, while workers are accusing the corporation of union-busting. The layoffs occurred right when the first collective agreement among workers at Amazon was about to be implemented, which led workers to believe the company chose to close all its Quebec operations rather than just the Laval DXT4 warehouse as a tactic to suggest plausible deniability. If they had maintained it, they would have been obligated to strike a deal with certified unions or have an agreement forced upon them under Quebec labour law.
Moreover, this shock layoff will inevitably discourage other unionization efforts across the rest of North America. The Quebec labour group Confederation des syndicats nationaux (CSN) is incentivized to take legal action against Amazon in the coming weeks.
This is not the first time that Amazon has engaged in union-busting. Another example is the company’s actions leading up to the International Brotherhood of Teamsters union’s strike, organized by delivery workers in New York City, Atlanta, Illinois, and California in demand of better pay, benefits, and working conditions. (Amazon’s poor working conditions, causing injuries exacerbated by inadequate medical care, have been well documented including in a US Senate report). After Amazon failed to acknowledge the Teamsters’ response deadline of December 15, the union launched a strike later that December to affect Christmas delivery services. By refusing to negotiate a contract, Amazon was violating labour law. It is common for employers to refuse to bargain and it is widely established that striking is the best way to get them to the table, but in this case Amazon insisted that the strike did not hurt its operations. They also maintained that the drivers involved were not Amazon workers but “Delivery Service Partners,” recruited through third-party companies, even though they wore Amazon uniforms, drove Amazon trucks and delivered only products bought on Amazon.com.
Companies like Amazon rely on low-cost and easily replaceable labour, meaning they can deal with high turnover. Signing contracts with workers guaranteeing them a fixed salary, certain benefits, and an established level of workplace safety contradicts their fundamental business model. These interests have led Amazon to engage in illegal union-busting activities such as threatening workers’ pay and already-meagre benefits for joining unions, firing some workers for unionizing, intimidating immigrant workers with Trump’s deportation policy, organizing anti-union sessions with managers and company lawyers, and spreading anti-union rhetoric while taking down pro-union messages. Although federal laws in the US govern how companies can and cannot deal with unions and collective action efforts, according to Arthur Wheaton, Director of Labour Studies at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, they face no significant penalty.
Amazon is not only violating labour laws in North America. During the summer of 2024, the heat in Northern India was so intense that birds were falling from the sky. Still, managers in Manesar made workers swear oaths that they would not drink water or take toilet breaks while working in order to meet productivity targets. Everybody complied, fearing they would lose their jobs. Workers in the plant-loading section resorted to covering exposed skin with clothing to avoid burning in the sun, but this made them sweat, instead losing body moisture to the point of dehydration. Some workers who collapsed from the heat were deducted wages for the time they spent in the hospital. Dharmendra Kumar, the president of the Amazon Workers Association of India, which is part of UNI Global Union, says Amazon workers in India are commonly employed on short-term contracts lasting between one and eleven months. Only contracts lasting over a year qualify for statutory benefits; at the end of 11-month contracts, workers are customarily fired and then hired again.
The exploitation of these workers has helped Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO, amass an estimated fortune of more than US$200 billion and qualify as the third richest man in the world. Now more financially potent than many governments, big multinational companies like Amazon are capable of influencing legislation in their favour. Not only do they spend tremendous amounts of money (sometimes through backchannel contracts) on lobbying and pressuring governments into enacting policies that may be unpopular with their electorates, but also directly fund many far-right political parties and idealist groups. Bezos, among other tech billionaires such as Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, were front and centre at Donald Trump’s second inauguration. On top of that, Amazon has started selling merchandise featuring Trump’s expansionary comments, such as “Canada, 51st State” and “Make Canada Great Again,” seemingly following after Google, whose map services recently renamed the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America, and Facebook, who have removed fact-checking on posts.
Amazon’s continued violations of human, labour, and democratic rights violations are why workers are calling for an Amazon boycott. While a few million sales may not make that big of a difference for the company, it can make a big difference in the development of small businesses in Quebec and Canada that respect labour laws.