Unifor targets BC for Amazon union action following labor law amendments

Revamped labor laws in British Columbia have led Canada’s largest private sector union to target the province as it aims to organize Amazon workers.

Last week, Unifor launched a campaign to unite Amazon staff at a press conference outside one of the US company’s fulfillment centers in New Westminster, B.C.

It is Canada’s newest union organization, and if successful, the center would be the country’s first unionized Amazon workplace.

“We have one of the best employment law regimes here,” Gavin McGarrigle, Unifor’s western regional director, said in an interview after the event.

McGarrigle referenced changes to BC’s labor relations code that will go into effect in June 2022 that will make it easier to form a union.

The code now says that if 55 percent of employees sign union cards during an organizing campaign, they can apply for certification. Previously, the BC Labor Relations Board (LRB) required 45 percent of employees to sign cards, after which a majority had to vote for the organization in a board vote at the yard.

That removes the ability for the company to influence the outcome of the vote, McGarrigle said.

“Employees don’t have to go through the intimidation of a vote where companies like Amazon will spend weeks bombarding them with anti-union messages and trying to convince them that joining the union is not a good thing,” he said.

Skipping the vote has benefited workers, said Anelyse Weiler, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Victoria.

“If you apply for your workplace, they can be processed much faster, and it makes a huge deal if you have a boss who is hostile to your attempts to unionize in a workplace,” she said.

LRB data shows that in the six months after the Labor Relations Amendment Act came into effect last year, the number of groups applying for union certification almost doubled from 58 to 114 compared to the previous six months.

Amazon “a great place to work,” the company says

Numerous employee concerns at Amazon Canada have been documented.

They include hazardous working conditions that lead to injuries, such as being asked to pack and lift 400 boxes in one shift, said David Bergeron-Cyr, vice president of the Confédération des syndicats nationaux.

A former Amazon delivery driver also told CBC News that he was expected to deliver 17 packages an hour and, as a subcontractor, would not be paid for overtime.

A spokesperson for Amazon Canada, Ryma Boussoufa, said in a statement that the company does not consider it necessary for its employees to join a union and prefers to work directly with its workforce to make the company “a great place to work”.

Amazon spent $14 million US in 2022 in response to union campaigns in the US, according to a disclosure document filed with the US Department of Labor.

In Canada, some former Amazon employees told CBC News they were fired for trying to organize their colleagues.

Unifor drive is the newest of many

Teamsters Canada and the Confédération des syndicats nationaux are among the unions that have historically tried to organize workers at the company’s workplaces.

Unifor’s size makes it best suited to organize Amazon workers in Canada, McGarrigle says, adding that the union has “dozens” of organizers on the ground in B.C.

Last year, workers at a New York warehouse became the first Amazon workforce to join a union. Chris Smalls, president of the Amazon Labor Union, who helped lead the push in New York, spoke at the New Westminster drive launch on June 21.

UVic’s Weiler says the event shows Unifor’s claim to unite Amazon workers.

But she notes that the strategy of an established union trying to organize is different from what led to victory in the US, where workers campaigned independently.

“What made them really powerful was that they built that solidarity between workers and workers,” she said.