About 2000 people demonstrated in Montreal on February 15 against the closure of Amazon's seven warehouses and distribution centres in Quebec, reports Marc Bonhomme.
The closures resulted in about 4700 direct and indirect job losses. The vast majority of sacked workers are members of the Confédération des Syndicats Nationaux (National Confederation of Unions, CSN).
Protesters were joined by a few dozen demonstrators from the left-wing party Québec Solidaire, which has 15 seats in the 125-seat Quebec National Assembly.
The undeclared illegal purpose of this savage closure was to punish the Quebec workers for having dared to form the only Amazon union in Canada, in one of its seven workplaces, at a time when the Quebec labour tribunal was about to impose a collective agreement on the company after it refused to continue negotiating with the union.
In the United States, Amazon's only union is still struggling to negotiate its first contract with the company.
Amazon, owned by plutocrat Jeff Bezos, employs 1.5 million people on five continents — mainly in the US, Canada and Europe. It is at the heart of the “Big Five” tech companies — also known as GAFAM (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft).
Amazon is part of the Trumpian oligarchic core, with the same economically and politically brutal relations with workers and oppressed peoples. Amazon is also a matrix for mass consumption, which it exacerbates by its practices, such as congesting the road transport system, and wasting energy at its server farms, which are increasingly used for energy-guzzling artificial intelligence.
As Félix Trudeau, president of the Laval Amazon workers union (Syndicat des travailleuses et travailleurs d'Amazon Laval) told Le Journale de Montréal: “The American multinationals feel they have a free hand, and I think that Trump's election and the history of tariffs reinforce American imperialist ambitions and the power that these multinationals have.”
The CSN is calling for a boycott on Amazon by both government and the general public. The City of Montreal has promised to participate. The “Ici, on boycotte Amazon” (Here, we boycott Amazon) citizens’ movement, supported by some 50 trade union, community and student organisations, is leading the fight alongside the trade union movement.
There is a great deal of popular anger, at least in Quebec, and it is intertwined with that against Donald Trump's US, which, in addition to its tariff war, wants to make Canada its 51st state.
A number of demands are on the table, such as “Keep the warehouses open now!”, “Keep workers employed!”, “Respect union rights!”, “No public money for Amazon!”, “If the warehouses close: Amazon out!”, “Suspend ALL Amazon operations in Quebec!”, “Expropriate Amazon's land, buildings and other assets!”, “Return all public subsidies received by Amazon!”, “One year’s salary and insurance for all workers, not just 14 weeks!” and “Full and free support for continuing education for laid-off workers!”.
As if confronting Amazon wasn't enough, the workers have to deal with the hypocritical, sympathetic-looking passivity of the Quebec government. Meanwhile, the federal government is more preoccupied with its leadership race on the eve of a general election in which the Liberals are turning right to beat the Conservatives by imitating their program.
When the union forced the Quebec labour minister to meet with them, he refused to take any measures against the multinational, including special legislation, contenting himself with recommending a legal recourse that would probably win the case but would take years.
Is it any wonder that the same minister has just tabled a strong anti-union legislation giving him the power to demand essential services and even — as is the case at the federal level — to refer any strike to compulsory arbitration?
The 2023–24 strike in Quebec's public sector was by far the biggest in Canada during those years, and is comparable to the big strikes in the US that happened in the same period, such as the United Auto Workers union strike, Boeing workers and California universities strikes.
Amazon’s dirty tricks, combined with those of Trump, invite working people to mobilise to make the fight against Amazon the spearhead of a fight against Trumpism, including his bias for hydrocarbons and against even moderate pro-climate solutions. Workers across Canada are against Trumpism and concerned about Amazon — in British Columbia, they are also fighting to form an Amazon union.
Could we not demand that Canada Post — which is almost bankrupt but has one of the most politicised and combative unions in Canada but deprived of its bargaining rights by a government order in lieu of special legislation — should have a monopoly, as it did in the past, on sorting and delivering parcels?
And why shouldn’t the US proletariat join this struggle on its own grounds, since it is in its own way being exploited and oppressed by the same diabolical Trump-Amazon duo?
As well as attacking Trumpism, this struggle is a golden opportunity to make the difficult combination of workers’ struggle with climate struggle.
Given the chronic weakness of the unions and the left throughout North America, there’s a long way to go.
Is this demonstration and the ensuing mobilisation nothing more than a last-ditch effort to save face before getting bogged down in lengthy legal proceedings?
There should have been 10,000 of us on February 15, or even hundreds of thousands — such as during the big climate demonstration with Greta Thunberg in 2019. But it's a start, let's keep up the fight.
[Visit the author’s website at marcbonhomme.com.]