Workers at an Amazon warehouse in Delta, B.C., have won the first contract in North America with the e-commerce giant. The collective agreement imposed by an independent arbitrator boosts wages and employee benefits and secures health and safety protections.
A Unifor press release details the three-year collective agreement, which will run until November 13, 2029. The contract will bring hourly wages to $29 throughout its course, enhance severance protections, and ensure employee benefits will remain the same or better than existing coverage.
“Amazon told everyone a union contract would never happen, but workers proved them wrong,” said Unifor National President Lana Payne.
Amazon, in its own press release, says that the BC Labour Relations Board should never have certified the union. The company claims it opposes unions “because we believe taking care of our people is the right thing to do.”
The delivery monopoly has a history of working its employees to the bone with several dying on the job over the last few years.
A hostile environment for unions
The union drive at the YVR2 warehouse in Delta began in January 2023 when workers reached out to Unifor for support. For the next three years, Amazon deployed the full force of its notorious union-busting machine against organizers and workers.
“They are spending millions, tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions fighting unions across North America, including right here in B.C.,” Unifor organizer Justin Gniposky told The North Star during the YVR certification drive last year.
Two years ago, for example, as Unifor was seeking certification at the Delta warehouse, Amazon engaged in a hiring blitz. Gniposky believes this was an attempt to nullify the unionization effort by inflating the number of workers. In B.C., a union can be certified after 55% of employees sign a union card.
A continent-wide struggle
Amazon’s extreme anti-union measures sparked backlash across Canada in early 2025 when it decided to close all its Quebec warehouses that January following a successful union drive at a Laval warehouse. Amazon shuttered its Quebec warehouses just before local labour laws would have forced it to negotiate a collective agreement with the union in Laval.
The few other Amazon facilities across North America that have managed to successfully form a union—like the JFK8 fulfillment centre on Staten Island, New York which successfully unionized in 2022—still have no collective agreements. This historic first at YVR could inspire workers at other Amazon facilities to pursue union contracts.
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