Amazon said Wednesday it will close all of its warehouses and logistics operations in Quebec, the Canadian province where unions have gained a foothold in one of its facilities, and will lay off 1,700 employees.
The closures represent a dramatic shift from Amazon’s recent investments in the county. The company opened three delivery stations in 2021, and one last year. It also had a small fulfillment center in Quebec and two parcel sorting warehouses.
In all, the investment totaled about 2 million square feet of operations, according to an estimate by Marc Wolfrat, a Montreal-based storage industry consultant who He has long researched Amazon’s logistics network.
Amazon said it will close its seven facilities “to provide the same great service and more savings to our customers over the long term,” according to a statement from Barbara Agright, a company spokeswoman. The company did not say whether unionization was a factor.
Amazon will continue to serve customers in Quebec by returning to its pre-2020 operating model, when facilities in neighboring provinces prepared packages that were then transported by third-party delivery companies to Quebec.
Amazon’s first union in Canada included about 230 warehouse workers in Laval, north of Montreal, after they joined the union in May. But the company challenged the unions’ efforts in a regional labor court. She said union certification should be revoked because workers signed union cards to indicate their support, rather than voting by secret ballot. The court ruled against Amazon in October, before the peak of the holiday shopping season.
Amazon said litigation over the matter is ongoing.
With Quebec’s lockdown, “they’ve made it very clear that we don’t want this spread,” Mr. Wolfrat said, referring to the union’s efforts. The company has more than 46,000 corporate employees and operations in Canada.
François-Philippe Champagne, Federal Minister of Innovation, said in a… mail On X he conveyed his disappointment to the head of Amazon in Canada.
“This is not the way business is done in Canada,” he added.
The National Federation of Trade Unions, a union representing workers, said it was informed of the closures via an email from an Amazon lawyer early this morning. Caroline Sinville, the union’s president, said in a statement that the company had been stifling its union campaign since it began three years ago, through measures that included what she called “disguised dismissals.”
“It’s a slap in the face to all workers in Quebec,” she said.
The Montreal metropolitan area has a population of about 4.5 million, making it larger than the greater Seattle area. Pulling operations from a large population center runs counter to what Amazon has touted in recent years as a key driver of success in its operations: placing more products closer to customers, to enable faster delivery. Amazon has repeatedly said this lowers delivery costs and prompts customers to order more frequently.
Amazon hasn’t abandoned its direct operations from a major population center in North America in years, although it did so more than a dozen years ago. Hardball is played routinely With states that have tried to collect taxes on online sales.
Walmart and other retailers have struggled in the past Establish a logistical foothold And in Quebec, where nearly two in five workers belong to a union. This is the highest rate among Canadian provinces, according to Government dataabout four times what it is in the United States.
Quebec Premier Francois Legault said Amazon’s move was “a private decision by a private company.”
“I can understand that it must be difficult for the 17,000 families involved,” Mr. Legault told reporters at a news conference on Wednesday, focusing most of his remarks on the need for Quebecers to mobilize and buy local products in response to the crisis. President Trump’s threat of tariffs.
Jean Bullet, the region’s labor minister, said workers affected by the warehouse closures will receive help from the government to find new jobs.
