Amazon Canada must cease its anti-union activities at its warehouse in the Lachine district of Montreal and is ordered to pay compensation to the CSN for the way it sought to counter the unionization of its workers.
The Administrative Labour Tribunal ruled that the company did indeed obstruct and seek to interfere in the unionization campaign being conducted by the CSN through a series of anti-union messages. However, it rejected the union’s claim that the company threatened and intimidated employees.
Administrative judge Henrik Ellefsen thus orders Amazon to remove and destroy all anti-union messages disseminated within the company by various means.
Messages broadcast in a loop
For example, the company broadcast messages such as “A union card is a legal document,” “Unions cannot guarantee changes in the workplace,” “Unions charge you dues” and “You do not have to provide your personal information.”
These messages were broadcast in a loop on screens reserved for human resources, placed on tables in the cafeteria, in the break room “and even on the bulletin boards located in the restrooms,” the judge notes.
Workers with precarious status
In his decision, he emphasizes that the employees “are mostly immigrant workers with precarious status. Often, the latter are more distrustful of the union, being very poorly informed about the laws that govern labor relations in Quebec” and that “employees are more hesitant to join the union, concerned about the impact of this gesture on their employment and on their status in their adopted country.”
For the magistrate, it is clear that “Amazon is not addressing people’s thoughts, it is trying to stir their emotions.” According to him, these messages take on a meaning that is not neutral “in the context where the employees to whom they are addressed may be concerned about the precariousness of their employment and their immigrant or resident status.”
He points out that describing a union card as “a legal document,” for example, led one employee to testify at the hearing that he understood from these messages “that signing it could land him in court.”
As for the assertion that a union cannot guarantee changes in the workplace, but that it charges dues, Justice Ellefsen sees this as an attempt to create the impression that a union is expensive but not useful.
Objective: to arouse concern
In short, he said, these messages “are mainly aimed at creating concern and aversion towards the union.”
“Amazon’s goal,” he concludes, “is to thwart the unionization process.”
Judge Ellefsen therefore ordered Amazon to pay the CSN $10,000 in moral damages and $20,000 in punitive damages. In return, since he considered that the employees had not been subjected to threats or intimidation, he found no harm to them and dismissed the request to pay $1,000 in exemplary damages to each of the employees.
The Lachine warehouse, formerly called YUL2 at the time the complaint was filed and now known as DXT6, employs more than 300 people, mainly in merchandise handling.
The DXT4 warehouse in Laval became the first unionized Amazon facility in Canada last May. The company, which failed in an initial challenge to the procedure, is still contesting this accreditation.