An announcement that falls like a hammer blow. The 1,700 employees and more than 200 contract workers at Amazon in Quebec learned via an email in their inbox on Wednesday January 22 of the end of their contract, at the same time as the departure of billionaire Jeff Bezos' firm from this northern province. Eastern Canada.
The spokesperson for the American firm, Barbara Agrait, justified the closure of its seven warehouses and the cessation of logistics activities in its own name, by a return to the previous Amazon delivery model: packages prepared in the neighboring provinces of Quebec, in Canada and the United States, then transported by third-party delivery companies. The delivery company Intelcom, whose headquarters is in Montreal and which is already a subcontractor to Amazon, has also published numerous job search advertisements on its website since this announcement, points out -
Discrepancy with method and investments
In fact, the withdrawal of Amazon's operations in Quebec goes against what the firm has presented in recent years as one of the main factors of its success, namely: “Bringing more products closer to customers, to enable faster delivery”.
This measure sounds all the more like a surprise given the gap with its numerous recent investments in the predominantly French-speaking province of around 4.5 million inhabitants. In 2021 and 2024, Jeff Bezos' company opened three delivery platforms there. It also has an order processing center and two parcel sorting warehouses in Quebec. In total, these investments represented “around 2 million square meters of activities”according to an estimate by a Montreal logistics consultant, Marc Wulfraat, in the New York Times.
Faced with this decision that is difficult to understand from a business point of view, the Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN), a union representing the 300 workers in one of the warehouses located in the Montreal region, believes that“Amazon did everything to prevent the unionization of its employees”. This group of employees, formed last May, was the first from the firm in Quebec to receive union accreditation. The American company challenged this decision in court. Although the court ruled against Amazon last October, the firm says the litigation was still ongoing.
-On a daily basis New York Timesexpert Marc Wulfraat points out the will «claire» of Jeff Bezos' firm – known for stifling any form of opposition – to prevent the union movement from “extends”. With approximately two out of five unionized workers, Quebec has the highest rate among Canadian provinces. It is also nearly four times higher than the syndication rate in the United States.
The Quebec Minister of Employment, Kateri Champagne Jourdain, for her part, kicked in. On -, she simply replied that, “For now”Amazon only raised with the local government a “reorganization of the delivery service”.
The Prime Minister of Quebec, François Legault, assured Wednesday “to understand” the difficulty “for the 1,700 families concerned”before focusing most of his remarks on the need for Quebecers to mobilize and buy local products in response to President Trump's threat of tariffs. Jean Boulet, the province's labor minister, said workers affected by warehouse closures would receive government help finding new jobs.
