Amazon terminates some thirty workers in Laval, the union protests

Amazon terminated some thirty workers at its Laval warehouse a few days ago. The multinational claims to have laid off seasonal workers, but the union retorts that the workers were actually hired more than six months ago. Yesterday afternoon, the Amazon Laval-CSN Workers’ Union unfurled a banner over Highway 15 reading: “Amazon despises its employees”.

In an interview with The North Star, union president Félix Trudeau explains that “these are workers who had been at the warehouse for some time. They were told by Amazon that they would no longer be working at the warehouse just a few days before they were fired. So they were thrown out on the street.”

In the media, Amazon spokeswoman Barbara Agrait claimed that “these people were hired as seasonal employees whose contracts stipulated clear end dates.”

Yet few seasons last as long as the employment of Chirag Rhati, one of the fired workers, who had been with Amazon for eight months. He denies Amazon's claim: “I was hired in April, and I don't think there's any major hollydays or occasion at that time.”

“In Canada, in this winter time, it's hard to find a job and there are bills to pay, and this is the way Amazon treats their hard-working workers,” he exclaims.

“They don't follow seniority order,” adds Denis Letourneux, a worker at the DXT4 warehouse. “We're aware that after the holiday season, there are indeed people who won't be rehired. But we have to follow seniority anyway.”

On the contrary, Rhati is convinced that the dismissals were not random: “They just let us go because they want to use us to set an example, for the new guys who are coming in: ‘if you be a part of the union, we'll have to fire you, because we think that you are nothing’.”

According to the union, workers who were hired on a three-month seasonal contract before the holiday season were not fired.

Amazon's hiring model denounced

An employee can only be hired at Amazon through a seasonal contract. These contracts, although more frequent around the holidays, are awarded all year round, regardless of the season.

The union denounces the total absence of any criteria for obtaining permanence, leaving workers in a state of uncertainty. It is common for workers to have their contracts renewed several times, in 30-day or three-month increments. Some end up working for more than a year without permanent status, and therefore without access to benefits.

“We want to get rid of this system,” Mr. Trudeau insists. “What we want is permanent jobs, like any other job in Quebec. Right now, it's the Wild West, and we won't accept that.”

He finds that Amazon would like to “go back to the 19th century. What they want is a system where the foreman arrives in the morning, chooses who he wants and sends the rest home. This way of controlling the number of employees, of firing people, is part of Amazon's strategy of keeping its workers precarious so they're easier to exploit.”

“What they're doing is they're putting people in uncertainty and forcing them to constantly ask themselves, 'Am I going to work next month? Am I going to work next week?” So there are a lot of people who feel pressured to work faster because of this.”

“Plus, if you keep workers in a seasonal status and then fire them, you don't even have to pay them benefits. They've been working themselves to death for 8 months, they've broken their backs, and you don't even have to pay their health and safety insurance. They just throw them away like garbage. But it's the Amazon workers who lift the boxes, not Jeff Bezos and his crew.”

Chirag Rhati told The North Star that he has spoken to some of his former colleagues and that they say they are short-staffed following the dismissal of the thirty or so workers. “They let us go and there was no point. They need us, but the fact is, they're trying to set an example to scare us, they don't care if we are seasonal. They're just using the contract as an excuse for their bad business, that's it.”