With the opening of multiple facilities in Quebec, Amazon must meet the challenge of recruiting hundreds of employees in the midst of a labor shortage. The multinational promises good working conditions, but the reality on the ground would be quite different, according to testimonies from former workers gathered by The duty.
Since the inauguration of its first operations center in Quebec in July 2020, Amazon has announced the opening of four other facilities in the province and is seeking hundreds of employees. The last one is the largest sorting center in Canada, in Coteau-du-Lac, in Montérégie, which opened less than two weeks ago. The company said it had recruited 90 of the 500 people who will be needed to operate the 720,000 square foot complex at full capacity.
At the entrance to the sorting center, the charm operation seems to have already started. Dozens of decorated pumpkins and ornaments reminiscent of an orchard have been installed to create a playful atmosphere. The famous slogan “Work hard. Enjoy. Create the story. “
“We have competitive salaries and benefits from day 1. We have a lot of fun and activities with the people here. The goal is for people to feel like they are part of a family, ”says site manager Anamaria Zammit. Starting salaries today are $ 17.60, about $ 1.50 more than what was offered for similar positions in early 2021 at their other warehouses. This is similar to the average wage offered for material handler positions in Quebec, which was $ 17.50 per hour this summer, according to the Survey. vacancies and salaries of Statistics Canada. We also promise a $ 3,000 signing bonus.
Learning manager Jason Brown hopes employees will want to work with next-generation robots that will make their jobs easier.
But robots can’t do all of the work. In the transportation and warehousing industry, employers are snapping up workers. Since the start of the pandemic, the number of vacant handler positions has more than doubled, from 1965 to 4,560 between the first quarter of 2020 and the second quarter of 2021, underlines the deputy director of the Institut du Québec, Emna Braham. . The craze for home delivery is perhaps no stranger, since the number of available positions has instead increased by 50% in businesses of all types.
So where can Amazon find people interested in assembly line work 60 km west of downtown Montreal? Almost everywhere, says Mme Zammit, who says he wants to organize a bus transport system for the workers. “Anyone who is available for work, we will be happy to have it,” said the young executive.
Lots of immigrant workers
Indeed, the requirements to get a job at Amazon are low, so much so that a significant proportion of those who work in their centers in Quebec are newcomers, noted community organizer Mostafa Henaway, of the Workers’ Center. immigrants.
“There are people who cannot work in the service sector because they are not bilingual. For many, it is their first work experience in Canada or Quebec. There are asylum seekers, young immigrants, young people who have just finished high school, ”notes Mr. Henaway.
This is the case of Sophie, a refugee from the Middle East, whose first Canadian work experience was in Amazon’s delivery center in Lachine. His name was changed to preserve his anonymity, for fear of reprisals. “I applied to several other places, but I had no feedback,” says the newcomer whose level of French is still low.
At Amazon, however, Henaway reports that an online, choice-answer questionnaire, which examines the candidate’s personality and motivation, serves as an interview. No recent work experience is required.
Conditions described as inhuman
Mr. Henaway himself worked in a Quebec Amazon warehouse for a month in 2021. “These are inhuman conditions, while Amazon maintains the myth of a ‘big family’,” he says.
According to him, working conditions, in particular the demands for speed, undermine the health and safety of workers. “If you have to move more than 300 boxes per hour, it’s about 12 seconds per box. We always work in a hurry, because everything has to leave at a certain time and we cannot put off until the next day, ”he testifies.
Sophie claims to have suffered a work injury to her wrist and shoulder. Despite physiotherapy treatments and weeks off from physical labor, the pain returned as soon as she started moving heavy objects again. No longer finding her place within the company, she ended up leaving.
Savannah, a former employee of the Longueuil sorting center whose name we have changed to preserve her anonymity for fear of reprisals, would not recommend anyone to work for the multinational. “I liked it the first few weeks. But after a while my back hurt, my legs were so tired, it was crazy. Even when there were no boxes to move, we couldn’t sit down, even for a few seconds. We only had a two-half hour break during twelve hour shifts, ”she lamented.
She says that often, not having time to go to the bathroom, she would play music in her head while waddling to forget her desire. “Constant camera surveillance is demeaning,” says Henaway.
Limit quotas
According to him, we should slow down, make employees vary tasks and work shorter hours. And Amazon won’t do it on purpose, he believes, with the goal of always delivering packages as quickly as possible at the lowest possible cost. This is why Mr. Henaway would like the government to legislate. He cites as an example a law passed in September by the State of California to limit productivity quotas in warehouses.
Minister Boulet did not respond to our request in connection with the possibility of instituting measures concerning productivity quotas. However, he said he was “attentive” to the issue of camera surveillance in the workplace and “to seek a balance between the right of management of an employer and the fundamental rights of employees”.
Asked about the effects of performance quotas and surveillance cameras, Amazon Canada says “the health and safety of our employees and the communities we serve remains our number one priority.”
“We have launched two health and safety programs – the My Wellbeing and WorkingWell programs – which provide employees with a wealth of physical and mental support systems and world-class digital resources to improve their well-being at work and at home. home, ”the company replied by email. “We support employees who do not meet expected performance levels by offering them support to help them improve,” she added.