Workers are seen outside Amazon's YVR2 fulfillment centre, in Delta, B.C., in July, 2025. An independent mediator has found that the company withheld its wage proposal while negotiating a new collective agreement for hundreds of warehouse workers.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
Amazon.com Inc. withheld its wage proposal while negotiating a new collective agreement for hundreds of warehouse workers in Greater Vancouver, causing a breakdown in bargaining between the company and the union representing those workers, an independent mediator has found.
In a report submitted to the British Columbia Labour Relations Board on Monday, the mediator involved in helping negotiate a first contract between Unifor Local 114 and Amazon said that the tech giant’s approach to bargaining was effectively unreasonable. As such, the mediator found, it hindered the process of bridging the differences between the two sides and achieving a new collective agreement for 800-odd workers at an Amazon warehouse in Delta, B.C.
Unifor successfully unionized workers at the Amazon warehouse – YVR2 – in July, 2025, and began meeting with company representatives in October to establish the terms of a first collective agreement. But the process has been fraught with complications, with the union alleging that Amazon had essentially “slow walked” the negotiating process by not tabling essential proposals in a timely manner.
Unions negotiated largest wage gains in a decade last year, surpassing inflation
“They were taking untenable positions, and stalling on presenting their proposal on wages to the mediator and to us, despite being asked numerous times,” said Gavin McGarrigle, Unifor’s western regional director.
Amazon tabled its wage proposal in April, 2026, after being advised by the mediator to do so more than once, according to the report. “In my experience, wage proposals are tabled earlier than what was the case here,” the mediator, Mark J. Brown, wrote in his report. “Until wage proposals are exchanged, parties cannot cost the impact on wage sensitive benefits.”
The report, obtained by The Globe and Mail, concluded that Amazon’s approach to collective bargaining “materially contributed” to the impasse. In particular, Mr. Brown noted, Amazon’s late tabling of a wage proposal and its insistence that the union waive the ability to challenge current and future workplace standards “removed any meaningful collective bargaining” on some of the most important issues identified by the union.
In a statement, Amazon spokesperson Sam Stephenson said that collective bargaining for a first contract is complex, and that Amazon has “participated in good faith throughout this process.”
Labour advocates in North America and Europe have widely described Amazon as an anti-union entity, even though its public stance on unions is relatively neutral. The company has routinely said it would prefer to engage directly with employees on issues such as wages and benefits, rather than involve a third party.
Despite multiple successful unionization attempts of Amazon workplaces in North America, such as in Staten Island, N.Y., and Laval, Que., no union has ever managed to sign a collective agreement with Amazon.
In January, 2025, Amazon shuttered all its facilities in Quebec, eliminating approximately 2,000 jobs, citing an “operational decision” to review its presence in Canada. But the union representing workers in Amazon’s Laval facility (which had unionized in May, 2024) told The Globe that the company’s decision was entirely motivated by fear of pro-union activity spreading to its other facilities if a collective agreement was successfully bargained. The union, Confederation des syndicats nationaux, was in fact negotiating a first collective agreement for its Laval workers.
The mediator’s report to the B.C. Labour Relations Board recommended that terms of the first collective agreement be imposed by an arbitrator, since a deal essentially could not be reached at the bargaining table because of Amazon’s conduct. Under B.C. labour law, the board can impose a first collective agreement if it determines there was bad-faith bargaining by one party, including failing to make a “reasonable or expeditious effort” to conclude a collective agreement.
According to Mr. McGarrigle, the mediator’s conclusions could bode well for Vancouver warehouse workers. “For Amazon, this independent report is momentous, because it will most likely lead to a first collective agreement,” he said.
“This is exactly the point when they took action in Quebec, so we are prepared for anything,” he added.
The union in Laval was on the verge of submitting a request to the province’s labour minister in early 2025 to ask that it appoint an arbitrator to force a first collective agreement, because of Amazon’s conduct at the bargaining table, when the company announced plans to shut down its Quebec operations.
The mediator’s report from B.C. contains both Unifor’s wage proposals and Amazon’s counterproposals.
The union proposed wage increases of 4 per cent in 2026, 3.5 per cent in 2027 and 3.5 per cent in 2028, while Amazon countered with wage hikes of 2.5 per cent, 2 per cent and 0 per cent. Unifor had also proposed an increase to paid time off and vacation days, which Amazon rejected. The starting hourly wage for warehouse workers ranges from $18 to $25, according to the union.
The tech giant, for its part, wants Unifor to permanently waive any right to challenge how hard and fast employees are required to work, and told the mediator it would never move from that position. According to Mr. McGarrigle, major factors behind the warehouse unionization drive included harsh working conditions and injury rates – an environment the union hopes to change through language in a new agreement.
In testimony cited in a July, 2025, decision by the B.C. Labour Relations Board, which led to the certification of Unifor Local 114, an Amazon worker stated that employees use scanners to process items and that the devices track employees’ productivity. Amazon, the worker said, estimates how long certain tasks should take, and if an employee took longer than that, a supervisor would identify them as experiencing productivity issues.