MONTREAL — In the last two weeks, organizers from Teamsters Canada have visited Amazon facilities in Calgary and Edmonton, as well as the Ontario cities of Milton, Cambridge and Kitchener, as part of a new campaign to unionize the e-commerce company’s workers and the “last-mile” couriers.

“We’re talking to workers across Canada, and the response from them has been overwhelmingly positive,” Teamsters’ lead Canadian organizer for Amazon Doug Finnson told The Logic. “More and more Amazon workers are not scared to say they need help. We’re hearing from Amazon workers right across the country.”

The Canadian push comes in the wake of the union’s vote at its annual convention last month to help Amazon workers in the U.S. and Canada organize, and as the company’s growth during the COVID-19 pandemic has renewed questions about its working conditions. After the vote, International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) general president James P. Hoffa said Amazon’s restriction of third-party sellers’ options of last mile-delivery firms was “destroying middle-class jobs.” 

While the union has so far spoken primarily to warehouse workers, Finnson says the drive will also focus on Amazon delivery and logistics workers, as well as employees at the many independent courier companies on which Amazon often relies to deliver packages to customers. “The workers in that industry also are expressing a community of interest with the Teamsters members that perform similar work,” he said. 

The union has called the Seattle-based company an “existential threat” to Teamsters workers. “History is not going to judge Amazon very well,” said Randy Korgan, Teamsters U.S. national director for Amazon, in an interview with The Logic. “Millions of people have gone to work for the company, physically hurting them, putting them in very, very demanding positions. It’s up there with some old robber barons of the past, up there with some old industrialists and plantation owners that go back pretty far in our history.” 

Founded in 1903, the IBT represents 1.4 million North American workers, including 125,000 in Canada. “The border does not interfere with us. We speak commonly back and forth, because people from the same industry have the same experiences on both sides of the borders,” Finnson said. “If there’s another union that wants to step up and give us a hand in the background, we will work with our brothers and sisters in other unions to achieve the objective for the workers.” 

The United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Canada, the country’s largest private-sector union, has already made attempts to unionize Amazon contract workers in the country. In 2017 and 2018, UFCW helped organize third-party delivery drivers in the Toronto area looking to unionize in a bid to negotiate with Amazon on their working conditions. The union is now fighting Amazon at the Ontario Labour Relations Board, arguing the firm blocked drivers’ attempts to form collective-bargaining units. The union claims Amazon penalized subcontractors who supported unionizing by lowering delivery volumes, forcing firings and driving one delivery firm into bankruptcy. 

UFCW Canada spokesperson Derek Johnstone told The Logic the union is “fully supportive of the efforts of Amazon workers to improve their lives by joining the [Teamsters] union.”

The Teamsters admit it will be a long and difficult campaign. The most recent attempt to unionize Amazon workers, by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union at the company’s facility in Bessemer, Ala., failed. The company is known for a broad range of anti-union tactics, including text messages to employees, worker websites and information sessions and fliers posted in bathrooms. It has also hired anti-union consultants and law firms, and has a formidable lobbying arm in the U.S. Amazon’s employee-turnover rate, which was at 150 per cent the year before the pandemic, further complicates any union campaign. “It’s a big strategic challenge, because you need to have a group of employees that will actually stick around to fight,” said Barry Eidlin, a McGill University assistant sociology professor who has written about attempts to unionize Amazon in the U.S.

“Amazon already offers what unions are requesting for employees: comprehensive pay and benefits from the first day on the job, and opportunities for career growth, all while working in a safe, modern work environment. At Amazon, these benefits and opportunities come with the job, as does the ability to communicate directly with the leadership of the company,” Amazon Canada spokesperson Dave Bauer said in a statement. 

In Canada, Amazon has 23,000 full- and part-time workers and operates 39 facilities—with another 12 opening this year. The company is among the most prolific lobbyists in Ottawa, having bent the ear of the federal government on a variety of subjects 109 times between October 2019 and June 2021, according to The Logic’s analysis of lobbying records. “The rules around organizing in Canada are somewhat better than in the U.S., but it’s not enough to make a difference when it comes to Amazon. Just because you have a somewhat better set of rules, you still have to take on the company,” said Eidlin.

One possible beachhead for the Teamsters Canada is Quebec, where Amazon has a data centre and a sorting centre. Quebec’s union movement played a key role in the development of the modern Quebec state, and the province has the country’s highest unionization rate. The Journal de Montréal, the highest-circulation French-language newspaper in North America, recently published a series about what it called the “hellish rhythm, frequent work accidents and arbitrary firings” at Amazon’s sorting centre in the Montreal borough of Lachine. 

Unlike in Ontario, where in most cases, 40 per cent of the bargaining unit must sign union cards and vote in order to achieve union certification, Quebec has a one-step card-check certification system, in which a union is certified if more than half of the members sign cards. “The card-check system is generally regarded as giving a better chance for a positive vote for unionization,” said Pier-Luc Bilodeau, an industrial-relations professor at Université Laval.

Teamsters spokesperson Christopher Monette wouldn’t comment on whether the union had contacted any of Quebec’s 500 Amazon workers.

The Teamsters’ North American campaign is part of a pan-union effort to organize Amazon employees around the world. “We have similar bilateral relationships with unions around the world that are also engaging Amazon workers,” said Iain Gold, director of IBT’s strategic research and campaigns. “What we’re trying to emphasize is that given this company, we’re going to be there to stand in solidarity with any form of worker or collective action that’s trying to improve their working conditions.”

With files from Catherine McIntyre in Halifax and Murad Hemmadi in Ottawa