MONTREAL — The various unionization drives at Amazon’s facilities across the country have made essentially the same pitch to workers: organized labour is the only antidote to the online shopping giant’s tendency to overwork and underpay its workforce. 

That these drives have been mostly unsuccessful speaks to either the pitch’s lack of resonance among workers, or the strength of Amazon’s well-documented ability to repel these attempts—in Canada and beyond.

In this sense, the certification of a union representing workers at Amazon’s DXT4 facility in the Montreal suburb of Laval, affiliated with the Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN), is doubly notable. By focusing on working conditions at the facility, CSN’s effort underscored the company’s history of outsized employee injury rates. It also brings to an end Amazon’s 13-year, union-free streak north of the 49th parallel. 

The establishment of this beachhead suggests Amazon’s six other facilities in Quebec are ripe for unionization. Indeed, when I spoke to CSN president Caroline Senneville, the other cogs in Amazon’s Quebec flywheel were clearly top of mind for her. Already, the CSN has filed a complaint with the Tribunal administratif du travail, the body responsible for union certification in the province, accusing Amazon of obstructing union activities at one of the company’s Montreal warehouses.

Yet it’s worth remembering why those 200 Quebec workers prevailed where others outside the province faltered. Call it another Quebec exception: if measured by employees’ success in turning workplace discontent into unionized shops, Quebec labour laws are among the most favourable on the continent, if not the world. 

When Amazon set up its first warehouse in Quebec in 2020, the company fell under a labour law established more than a half-century earlier, in the crucible of the Quiet Revolution, when many a provincial status quo fell by the wayside. The Code du travail was the response to a long-standing, overbearing anti-unionism in the province, and the generally wretched working conditions it produced.

It has been wildly successful, in that Quebec’s unionization rate is a third higher than the national average, and nearly double that of New York state, home to the only other successful Amazon unionization drive in North America.

Notably, the law allows for a “card check” certification process, in which workers need only sign cards if they wish to unionize. There is no subsequent vote: if a majority of employees sign, unionization generally becomes a matter of course. Senneville said Amazon workers gave a variety of reasons for signing: comparatively low pay, high injury rates, constant surveillance and the company’s tendency to over-hire and then lay off employees as demand waxes and wanes.

Other provinces including B.C. have card check processes. But Quebec’s simple-majority threshold sets it apart—in B.C., unions need 55 per cent signed up to avoid a subsequent vote. In the case of Amazon, this is crucial: the company has repeatedly used the period between card signing and vote to foment anti-union sentiment among workers. By law, it couldn’t do so at DXT4.

Tellingly, Amazon isn’t contesting the legitimacy of CSN’s unionization effort, but the law itself. “We believe it’s important for all employees to have their voices heard, but card check auto-certification does the opposite,” Amazon spokesperson Barbara Agrait told me. 

There is a cautionary tale in Quebec’s worker-friendly bliss. In 2004, when Amazon’s anti-union bona fides were still embryonic, workers organized at a Walmart in Jonquière. It was a North American first for Walmart employees, but the victory was short-lived, as the Arkansas-based chain shuttered the location the following year. Though the Supreme Court of Canada ordered Walmart to compensate the 180 workers a decade later, the company nonetheless dodged a potentially expensive precedent.

It invites the question: will Amazon do the same with DXT4? “We can’t rule it out,” Senneville told me. After all, the facility has far fewer employees than the Amazon warehouse in Coteau-du-Lac. What’s more, Amazon rents the DXT4 building, as it does most of its facilities, making it far easier to close the joint should it choose to do so. (Agrait didn’t answer my question about the possibility of Amazon closing DXT4.)

I put the question to Marc Wulfraat of MWPVL, a Montreal-based supply chain consulting firm. “I think the risk is relatively low,” he told me. The reasons: Amazon executives knew the risks unions posed, yet invested anyway because Montreal is a big, lucrative market. “Amazon does not publicize it, but they have unions that they contend with in other countries such as the U.K., Germany and Spain,” he said. “This is no different.”

In short, Quebec is too sweet a plum for Amazon to ignore, regardless of the precedent its labour movement just set. Amazon workers in other plump, rich provinces might take note.

Martin Patriquin is The Logic’s Quebec correspondent. He joined in 2019 after 10 years as Quebec bureau chief for Maclean’s. A National Magazine Award and SABEW winner, he has written for The New York Times, The Guardian, The Walrus, Vice, BuzzFeed and The Globe and Mail, among others. He is also a panelist on CBC’s “Power & Politics.”