Amazon said Wednesday it would close all its warehouse and logistics operations in Quebec, the Canadian province where unions gained a foothold in one of its facilities, and lay off 1,700 workers.
The closures represent a reversal from Amazon's recent investments in the province. The company opened three delivery stations in 2021 and one last year. It also had a small fulfillment center in Quebec and two warehouses that sorted packages.
All told, the investments totaled about 2 million square feet of industrial space, according to an estimate by Marc Wulfraat, a warehousing industry consultant based in Montreal who has long researched Amazon's logistics network.
Amazon said it is closing the seven facilities to “provide the same great service and even greater savings to our customers in the long term,” according to a statement from Barbara Agrait, a company spokeswoman.
Amazon will still serve customers in Quebec by returning to its pre-2020 operating model, when facilities in neighboring provinces prepared the packages that were then transported to Quebec by third-party delivery companies.
Amazon's first union in Canada included about 230 warehouse workers in Laval, north of Montreal, after they unionized in May. But the company challenged the union efforts in a provincial labor court. It argued that union certification should be revoked because workers signed union cards to show their support, rather than voting by secret ballot. The tribunal ruled against Amazon in October, just before the peak holiday season.
Amazon said litigation over the matter continued.
With the closures in Quebec, “they made it very clear that we don't want this spread,” Mr. Wulfraat said, referring to union efforts. The company has more than 46,000 business and operational employees in Canada.
François-Philippe Champagne, the federal innovation minister, said in a post on X that he had conveyed his disappointment to the head of Amazon in Canada.
“This is not the way business is done in Canada,” he said.
The Confédération des Syndicats Nationaux, a union representing workers, said it was informed of the closures early this morning via an email from one of Amazon's lawyers. Caroline Senneville, the confederation's president, said in a statement that the company has been suppressing their unionization effort since it began three years ago, through actions that included what she called “disguised layoffs.”
“It's a slap in the face to all workers in Quebec,” she said.
Amazon denied the union's claims that the layoffs were inappropriate.
The Montreal metropolitan area has a population of approximately 4.5 million, making it larger than the greater Seattle region. Withdrawing operations from a major population center runs counter to what Amazon has touted in recent years as a central driver of success within its operations: bringing more products closer to customers, to enable faster delivery. That, Amazon has said repeatedly, lowers delivery costs and gets customers to order more often.
Amazon hasn't given up direct operations from a major population center in North America in years, though it routinely cracked down on states trying to collect taxes on online sales more than a dozen years ago.
Walmart and other retailers have struggled in the past to gain a logistics foothold in Quebec, where about two in five workers are unionized. That's the highest rate among Canadian provinces, according to government data, and about four times higher than in the United States.
Quebec Premier François Legault said Amazon's move was “a private decision by a private company.”
“I can understand that it must be difficult for the 1,700 families involved,” Mr. Legault told reporters at a news conference on Wednesday, focusing most of his comments on the need for Quebecers to mobilize and buy local products in response to President Trump's tariffs. threat.
Jean Boulet, the province's labor minister, said workers affected by warehouse closures will receive government help to find new jobs.
