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https://iclfi.org/pubs/wt/2025-amazon
Translated from Amazon gifle les syndicats et le Québec (French), République ouvrière supplement

First published in French on 24 January 2025 as a supplement to République ouvrière.

The announced closure of Amazon’s warehouses and deliveries in Quebec is an insult to the courageous activists who have unionized Amazon in Laval and to the entire Quebec labour movement. Jeff Bezos thinks he can wipe his feet on us, so let’s really give it to him.

The consumer boycott campaigns currently being proposed are not the way to go. These campaigns don’t mobilize workers at the point of production and appeal to the “moral” common sense of isolated individuals, which is doomed to fail.

Instead, Quebec unions, led by the CSN and FTQ, must join forces to block all Amazon deliveries in Quebec. Let’s mobilize all workers: Don’t touch Amazon packages! Bezos wants to treat us like submissive cheap labour? So be it. Let’s make sure he doesn’t make a dime in Quebec! It’s totally possible and feasible: we need to deploy all our union power now! Because doing nothing would send a clear message to the big bosses that in Quebec union power is a thing of the past.

This attack also shows that to unionize Amazon, we’re going to need a completely different strategy from that employed so far by activists and the union bureaucracies. Organizing Amazon warehouse by warehouse, region by region, doesn’t work. It’s the same problem in English Canada and the United States. What’s needed is a united North American labour front that goes on the offensive in a coordinated fashion. Quebec’s powerful unions can take the lead. The FTQ/CSN should send 200 union organizers to English Canada and another 200 to the U.S. to push this perspective forward! That’s how the auto industry got unionized, for example, when American union activists came to organize in Canada.

Amazon executives think they can get away with this because Quebec is isolated. The reality is that Amazon is closing its operations because they don’t want the union activism of Quebec to spread. The only way to get Bezos to back down is to launch an assault on his business on a North American scale. That’s where it’s going to hurt.

  • For an immediate union Common Front to block all Amazon operations!
  • FTQ/CSN: Send hundreds of union organizers to English Canada and the U.S. to launch Amazon unionization everywhere!
  • Jeff Bezos spits on Quebec workers—let’s show him it’s going to cost him big time!
  • For a union boycott of Amazon! Don’t touch Amazon packages!