VANCOUVER — British Columbia’s Labour Relations Board has ruled in favour of using binding arbitration to settle a labour dispute between Amazon and unionized workers at its warehouse in Metro Vancouver after the e-commerce giant fought the idea. In a ruling issued Tuesday by associate chair Andres Barker, the board says it is ordering Amazon and Unifor — which represents the workers at the Delta, B.C., site — to “conclude their first collective agreement” through a single arbitrator. The decision says the board will appoint an arbitrator if the two parties don’t agree on one within seven days. Amazon rejected a mediator’s recommendations for arbitration in June, saying it wanted to continue the process of direct negotiation with Unifor, which included the right to strike or lockout. The board ruled in February that Amazon violated the provincial labour code in its treatment of unionized workers at the warehouse in Delta that left them out of scheduled pay increases that the companies workers received elsewhere. Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling but has previously described bargaining for a first contract “complex” while adding it has participated in good faith and would continue to do so. Unifor western regional director Gavin McGarrigle says in a statement that the union applauds the decision, while criticizing Amazon’s behaviour in talks, which the mediator found was the source of the impasse in bargaining. “Amazon’s behaviour has been so bad because it knows what we know: unions build worker power,” McGarrigle says. “Amazon sees unions as an existential threat to ruthless and unsustainable workplace management.” This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 5, 2026.
