Quebec’s labour tribunal has given union accreditation to workers at an Amazon warehouse in Laval, Que., a first in Canada.

Workers at the DXT4 warehouse, located in Laval, a suburb north of Montreal, had been working toward unionizing with the Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN) for two years.

The CSN filed an application with Quebec’s Administrative Labour Tribunal on April 19 to represent some 200 employees. The decision came down Friday.

Caroline Senneville, the CSN’s president, said employees were dissatisfied with what they described as a hectic work pace, low wages, and inadequate health and safety measures.

  • BeaverEnglish
    46·
    6 months ago

    Bravo! Quebec once again showing the rest of Canada how it’s done.

    • BeaverEnglish
      6·
      6 months ago

      It’s time for the people to show who’s in charge.

  • Rentlar
    17·
    6 months ago

    Amazon has previously stated that the company does not require employees to meet fixed productivity targets.

    Haven’t heard much of it in the last while but isn’t this because the productivity targets are variable, i.e. they start out lenient then gradually increase until a person’s breaking point?

    ETA: something along the lines of this article from The Verge

    • Avid Amoeba
      6·
      6 months ago

      Oh this sounds brilliant. And they can’t even show what the targets are because they don’t know them. Some lambda computes them on the fly, per person, per hour.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    1·
    6 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    Workers at the DXT4 warehouse, located in Laval, a suburb north of Montreal, had been working toward unionizing with the Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN) for two years.

    The company also claimed some sections of Quebec’s labour code go against the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms by using membership cards instead of a secret ballot vote.

    Amazon is not the first company to argue that employees should undergo a voting process to unionize instead of using member cards, which is typically an intimidation tactic, said Senneville of the CSN.

    In June 2022, the CSN filed a complaint with the labour board against a different Amazon warehouse in Montreal’s Lachine borough after posters it said were meant to discourage people from signing union cards went up.

    Barry Eidlin, an associate professor of sociology at McGill University with a focus on labour policy, said workers likely won’t see major improvements in their working conditions any time soon.

    “This is one fulfillment centre in a large international network of a global company, so it’s going to take a lot more than one warehouse unionizing to actually make a difference in the wages and working conditions at Amazon,” he said.

    The original article contains 947 words, the summary contains 195 words. Saved 79%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • Grant_MEnglish
    21·
    6 months ago

    I LOVE this particular slippery slope.