Amazon warehouse in Alberta sees comeback of union drive after a landmark labour victory in U.S.

Organizers from Teamsters Local Union 362 rally outside an Amazon facility to get support and distribute information to Amazon workers, in Nisku, Alta, on Tuesday, September 14, 2021. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson)

Teamsters Canada has brought back a union drive for workers in an Amazon fulfillment centre in south Edmonton, planning to build on the momentum raised by the first successful organizing effort in the company’s history in New York.

A trade union of more than a million members in the United States and Canada, The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, has made organizing Amazon a top priority, says Bernie Haggerty, an agent with the Teamsters Local Union 362.

This is Teamsters 362’s second attempt at forming a union at the Nisku, Alta., warehouse after failing to secure a 40 per cent base for a union vote in 2021.

An application to unionize must demonstrate that at least 40 per cent of employees support it, according to provincial regulations. Workers are only authorized to vote for or against unionization once an application has been granted by the labour board.

Teamsters 362 never made it to that point.

“There couldn’t be a more opportune moment to try again,” said Haggerty who is also one of the lead organizers of the Nisku campaign.

“What happened in New York is a real motivation for us, and we want to strike as quickly as we can now.”

Amazon workers in Staten Island, New York, voted to unionize in early April, marking them the first successful U.S. organizing effort in the retail giant’s history.

This was an unexpected win for a movement led by a fired employee who successfully rallied workers to create the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), an upstart, independent, worker-led effort.

“The ramifications of the Amazon victory will clearly extend beyond the borders of the United States,” said Barry Eidlin, an assistant professor of sociology at McGill University.

“It's important to understand the magnitude of this victory. It is the largest single bargaining unit that has won a National Labor Relations Board Union Election, at least since the 1960s."

“So, I would not be surprised if Amazon workers globally decide to take note,” he said.

Teamsters Local 362 represents about 7,000 workers at 75 companies in Alberta and the Northwest Territories and began handing out union cards in the parking lot of the Amazon warehouse this week, to obtain workers' contact information.

However, several hurdles still lie ahead.

“A main difference between the Amazon union in New York and what we’re trying to do is we don’t have someone on the inside,” said Haggerty.

The workers in the New York warehouse formed their own union as opposed to joining an existing one, with their model designed to mobilize and organize the people they work with, Jason Foster, an associate professor of human resources and labour relations at Athabasca University, told CTVNews.ca.

“Teamsters follow a more traditional model, where they come in and persuade workers to join them, which is always more challenging,” Foster said.

Teamsters’ initial attempt to unionize Amazon’s Nisku warehouse workers was plagued with problems.

Haggerty alleged that Amazon exaggerated the number of workers at the facility to the point that the Alberta Labour Relations Board concluded the Teamsters lacked the requisite backing of 40 per cent of the workforce.

“The company inflated their numbers when we made our application, including lists of employees who had not worked there for three months,” Haggerty said.

“We found several discrepancies in the list of people that work there, and strategically we could have gone to hearing but we didn’t.”

In response to renewed union efforts in the Nisku Warehouse, Amazon Canada spokesperson Paul Flaningan said the company’s employees “have the choice of whether or not to join a union.”

Foster isn’t ruling out a knock-on effect of the unionizing effort at the Amazon warehouse in New York.

“We have definitely seen this kind of thing create a ripple effect for unions, as it sort of boldens workers in other stores or sites,” he said.

“It’s already happening with Starbucks all over the United States."

At least 140 Starbucks stores in 27 U.S. states have filed petitions for union elections. This wave comes after a Starbucks in Buffalo, N.Y. voted in favour of unionization in December, making them that country's first Starbucks to officially unionize.

In Canada, a store in Victoria, B.C. successfully ratified a union contract in 2020 while a location in Calgary is also organizing.

Historically, like Amazon, Starbucks has fought against unionization. Last year, Starbucks’ revenues were as high as US$29 billion, and its former CEO, Kevin Johnson, earned US$20.4 million.

Over the last few years, several studies have examined concerning working conditions at Amazon warehouses across North America.

Workers at Amazon warehouse operations in the U.S, for example, had an injury rate of roughly 80 per cent higher than the rest of the warehouse industry according to study released in June 2021 by the Strategic Organizing Center, a collaboration of American labour organisations.

Working conditions at the company’s warehouses in Canada have also been under scrutiny, particularly during the pandemic when some locations saw a number of COVID-19 cases among workers. 

However, according to Haggerty, Amazon’s labour model of a high turnover rate makes it hard to create support for unions.

Amazon announced this week that it plans to object to the union's win in New York, accusing the union of having threatened warehouse workers to vote in favour of the organizing effort.