On February 3, UVAE’s National Office officially decided to support the movement “Here we boycott Amazon,” which denounces the abuses of workers’ rights by this American multinational. UVAE encourages its members to follow this campaign and develop the reflex of “buying local.”
Recently, Amazon made an announcement that shocked the retail community, which was to close its warehouses in Quebec, causing a total of 3,500 people to lose their income overnight.
Amazon is one of the companies with the highest rate of work-related accidents in Quebec, in addition to offering poverty wages and conducting illegal anti-union campaigns in its warehouses! The company attempted to overturn the Quebec Labour Code and exploited the precarious status of migrant workers with a system of piecemeal employment contracts renewed arbitrarily and without notice.
Workers had initiated procedures to establish a union to protect their interests and improve their working conditions, including better pay and safety standards.
In support of this wave of solidarity, UVAE’s National Office has decided to completely stop using Amazon, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and all services related or belonging to the multinational. We will no longer refund any invoices from this supplier.
UVAE also wants to raise its members’ awareness on thinking local before ordering from Amazon.
True to its values, UVAE takes a stand against Amazon to protect what is most important : access for all workers to decent and respectful working conditions.
In Solidarity,
Toufic El-Daher (he/him)
National President