Deliveries blocked at five Intelcom warehouses across Quebec

In an effort coordinated by the organization Workers' Alliance, workers and activists blocked deliveries at five Intelcom warehouses this morning across Quebec in Montreal, Quebec City, Gatineau, and Joliette. Intelcom is the primary subcontractor for Amazon deliveries in the province.

Félix Trudeau, member of Workers' Alliance and president of the STTAL–CSN, the first Amazon union in Canada, spoke to The North Star outside an Intelcom warehouse in the Saint-Laurent neighbourhood of Montreal. 

“We came here to take action to denounce Amazon's subcontracting of jobs to Intelcom, to other subcontractors like it. It's a scam aimed at continuing the exploitation of workers in Quebec," he explained. Workers' Alliance is calling for sanctions against Amazon, compensation for laid-off workers, and for the Quebec parliament to pass a special law to seize assets and ban the multinational's activities from its territory.

The action was part of a broader campaign in support of the more than 4,500 workers fired by Amazon when it closed its Quebec warehouses. Trudeau explains:

"This action is part of the pressure we want to put on Amazon's subcontractors and on the Quebec government to support our demands. We want the government to take the side of Quebec workers, not the American multinational."

Intelcom has been Amazon's primary subcontractor in Quebec since 2015 and is playing an essential role in Amazon's transition back to fully subcontracted operations in the province. Last month, members of Workers' Alliance occupied an Intelcom warehouse in Montreal.

“They ignored Workers' Alliance once, so our second action is five times more massive. Now, what I want to say to the government, Amazon and Intelcom is that they shouldn't ignore us again,” said Benoît Dumais, spokesperson for the organization.

Workers' Alliance cited Intelcom's poor working conditions, which they say are possibly worse than Amazon's, as a further reason for today's action. Trudeau shared his assessment:

“The working conditions are really Uberized, precarious working conditions with lots of agencies. We know it's dirty, it's badly paid. We stand in solidarity with Intelcom workers, and we denounce the company's bad practices."

Louisa Worrell, co-spokesperson of the "Here we Boycott Amazon" campaign, agrees:

"This fight is about workers having the right to better their working conditions, and Intelcom is a sad example of how Canadian and even Quebecois-owned companies can be just as exploitative as the American oligarchs."

Since the closures, François Legault's CAQ government has done very little to react to Amazon's brazen union busting and disrespect of Quebec labour laws. Their only response has been to require that the Treasury Board approve all public Amazon purchases. Worrell spoke on the provincial government's inaction:

"It's truly disgusting the betrayal we are seeing from our government in light of the huge attack Amazon has made on Quebec working class and the whole country's working class. I think the answer is that workers should be calling on their unions to boycott Amazon if they are unionized."

Dumais sees the Amazon closures in a larger context of attacks the working class of Quebec and Canada: 

“The context is unequivocal. Amazon is closing its warehouses to break a union. Boulet introduces Bill 89 to end strikes whenever he pleases, and the feds issue back-to-work orders at the drop of a hat. We're living through a frontal attack on the working class's right of association in Canada.”

He continues: "We don't just want to resist Amazon's and the government's attacks, but to organize the working class into a political force that can win against Canada's monopoly oligarchy. We hope all like-minded people will join our movement."