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This afternoon, hundreds of people marched through downtown Montreal to denounce Amazon's anti-worker and anti-union practices in Quebec. Demonstrators expressed their support for the 4,500 laid-off Amazon workers and criticized the Quebec government's inaction regarding the multinational's warehouse closures.
Amazon announced the closure of all its Quebec warehouses in late January. The announcement came during negotiations with the STTAL–CSN, the first union of Amazon workers in Canada. Since then, Francois Legault's CAQ government has done little to react to the American multinational's brazen union-busting.
At the front of the protest, Jean-Baptiste Uguelin, a member of the STTAL marched alongside other members of his union. The STTAL co-organized the demonstration along with the "Here we boycott Amazon" movement and the labour organization Workers' Alliance.
"Amazon has no respect for our laws, whether it's the laws that organize workers, whether it's the laws that link workers with employers. It's total disrespect," Uguelin told The North Star.
"That's why today we're taking action against the Quebec government to get them to take a stand, so we can find out if they're on the side of employers or on the side of workers."
On February 24, the CAQ announced that all public bodies in Quebec would have to submit a request to the Treasury Board to authorize any purchases from Amazon. The government encouraged public servants to buy locally and avoid Amazon. Uguelin doesn't think this is enough.
“We're not satisfied yet. Nothing is clear yet. We want them to take clear positions at government level so that the whole population can see clearly that the government wants to stop doing business with Amazon,” he said.
"That's when we'll start to understand that indeed the government has understood that the company has raised its voice against the government, against Quebec society, and they have to bring them back to order."
The watchword of the day was "Amazon is attacking Quebec: Legault, do your job!" Marina Rosa, secretary of the Montreal chapter of Workers' Alliance, explained to The North Star why the movement is targeting the Legault government:
"It's the provincial government that's in a position to put in place, for example, continued training for workers, to guarantee a year's salary, to take Amazon to court, to ask what Amazon has extracted from Quebec."
Rosa shared her thoughts on the reasons behind the provincial government's inaction towards the closures:
"In government, there are vested interests that remain in favour of keeping Amazon's services for now, but their job is to put the voice of the people first. That's not what's happening in reality."
As attacks on working-class people in Quebec and Canada compound, Rosa believes now is the time for workers to stand up:
“The postal workers, blue-collar city workers, even the longshoremen—there are several attacks by big business in different sectors of the Quebec economy, and the people who will suffer most from these attacks are all of us,” she said.
"So this is the perfect time to unite our struggles, to respond to the extent of our strength, our unity. It's unity that will ensure that we'll be able to meaningfully respond to this attack on the people."/
Louisa Worrell, co-spokesperson of the "Here, We Boycott Amazon" campaign, agrees that politicians' personal interests prevent them from advocating for what the population wants:
"Politicians aren't from the people, generally. They're from the ruling class. They're from the haves, not the have-nots. Their policies continually and systematically favour those who have."
Worrell noted that Canadian and American business owners both benefit from a Quebec government that collaborates with big business at the expense of workers:
"This is why there's so much collaboration between the bourgeoisie in Canada and the bourgeoisie in the States, the business owners of Canada and the business owners of the States. They are mutually happy to exploit the people of Quebec. That's the truth about what our government represents and why they roll out the red carpet for companies like Amazon."
Worrell described how the provincial government supported the development of Amazon's Quebec infrastructure:
"The Quebec government has given a lot of money, has given reduced electricity rates to Amazon, dezoned and forked up arable land for warehouses that we could be using to grow crops, and has generally provided all kinds of subsidies for them to take root here in Quebec."
Worrell believes that a company with such a poor track record on labour issues hardly merits such support:
"The provincial government has given Amazon special treatment and treated them as this amazing employer, ignoring the reputation that Amazon already had of being union busters, the reputation of treating workers as disposable, from their high turnover rate to high accident rate."
The campaign against Amazon will hold an assembly on March 15 at the Maison Théâtre in Montreal, the day of the last warehouse closure in the province.
"We see that the government is backing down," says Worrell. "They gave us an inch, so let's take a mile. We've got to push through it and continue the pressure that it is working."